


The Jericho Compass

by prolixdreams, Supernatastic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Canon-Typical Violence, Castiel Has a Pet, Castiel and Hannah (Supernatural) are Twins, Chuck's a+ parenting, Goblin Crowley, Goblins, M/M, Magic, Minor Character Death, Movie AU, Pre-dead characters, Prince Castiel (Supernatural), Spirits, fairytale AU, mining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-07 18:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 51,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19090327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prolixdreams/pseuds/prolixdreams, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supernatastic/pseuds/Supernatastic
Summary: Once upon a time, there lived a magical race called the Thaumaturges, and they ruled a rocky, windswept nation, kept the Goblins (little more than a feral nuisance) in check, and grew wealthy with the products of the mines.This is not that time.Now, King Michael has confirmed the end of all magic, Goblins are more clever and dangerous than they have ever been before, and beleaguered miners risk it all to scrape the dregs of a hollow mountain.Prince Castiel is adrift in this new world. Wherever he turns, all he finds is less hope and more trouble, until he meets Dean and his brother Sam, who work in the mines. Together, with a gift from beyond in the form of a mysterious golden thread that leads the way, they must try to uncover the secrets that have rotted their land, to change its bleak future.(Inspired by The Princess and the Goblin)





	1. A Very Strange Enchanted Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to EmiliaOagi for the motivation and editing assistance
> 
> Art by the amazingly amazing Supernatastic, you can find all the art throughout the story as well as in the linked art post. 
> 
> A message directly from Supernatastic: 
> 
> Wow! This bang has been such a long time coming for sure. So I had actually never seen this movie before I read the claim summaries, but I was still captivated by the story. There is so much imagery in this amazing fic and choosing images to draw was honestly challenging.
> 
> Here is my process:  
> ReFeReNcEs! I spent hours and hours finding good references for these drawings. By far my favorite art of this whole lot is the promo cover. I am known to be terrible at scenery and backgrounds, and I impressed myself so much with what I was able to accomplish. Also fun fact: The black horse that Dean was riding I had actually already drawn a year ago and never posted so it was recycled for this project. 
> 
> You can check out the separate art post here:[Here](https://supernatastic101.tumblr.com/post/185373532211)

 

* * *

 

 

_“Castiel!”_ Hannah whispered, an urgent hiss seemingly from somewhere on the other side of a stone wall and an oriel window, out in the brisk, overcast night.

The last time Prince Castiel saw the _face_ of his twin sister – during waking hours, at least – it was ten years before, through the crystalline pane of the coffin in which she was buried.

Hearing her _voice_ , on the other hand, was another matter altogether.

He did not look, or at least, he tried very hard not to look, for as long as he could. It was the first time this year for him to hear it, and though the season was right, and he had been expecting it any day, he was still never ready for it to start back up again.  

There were other places for him to look: at the food he was pushing around the plate in front of him, at the grain of the table wood, at the fresco lining the upper half of the dining room wall. It depicted all of the Thaumaturges who’d once resided in this castle, but in a state that had never actually occurred. Each set of twins, and the two singles, were painted all in one place. It was a bizarre fantasy. Lucifer had killed Raphael, driven Gabriel away, and himself been punished long before Castiel, Naomi, Anna, or Hannah were even created and brought here. Most of the people shown together in that image had never even met.

What was the point?

The orange cast from the enormous fireplace behind Naomi -- the real one, in the room with him -- wasn’t warm and comforting, as it ought to have been, but oppressive, leaving the room feeling closed-in and airless, despite it being only the two of them in the large hall.

As Castiel understood it, Hannah’s death had been a matter of truly improbable misfortune. The little traces of Thaumaturgical energy that remained in an otherwise magically dead world were, according to Michael, supposed to protect all of the siblings. Castiel himself had never caught Hannah’s affliction, despite hardly ever leaving her bedside for the entire ordeal. He was fairly certain that Michael himself had never had so much as a head cold in his hundreds of years of life. The odds of one among them not only getting sick but also dying of it had to be astronomical.

Ultimately, as always, he lost the battle with himself. He turned his head toward the window, but there was nothing to look upon. There was only darkness in the inner courtyard on the other side of the latticed glass.

“Is supper not to your liking?” Naomi asked, not even trying to make eye contact.

“It’s fine.” Tension shot through Castiel’s shoulders. He set his fork down a little more harshly than he intended, making himself flinch. Naomi, though, was as steady as the stone of the vaulted ceiling above.

“Michael rides out at sunrise,” she said. “Affairs of state – very urgent.”

“Always something urgent this time of year, isn’t there?” Castiel’s gaze strayed over her shoulder, where he thought he saw something move in the corridor. “I suppose you’ll tell me that he’ll be gone a little over a fortnight, until just after—”

“ _What_ are you suggesting?” Her eyes narrowed.

She knew very well what he meant, he was sure of that, and there wasn’t anything he could say that would be to his advantage. He bit his tongue.

“Anna’s waiting for you in the armory,” Naomi said, scolding in her tone, if not her words, speaking as this explained anything. “You’re to train with a new weapon. For Goblins. Michael’s crystal blade.”

“Why?” Castiel pressed, guessing at what she meant, wishing she’d be more direct, so he didn’t have to. “His is the least included, the most powerful. If he think Goblins are a threat all of the sudden, why wouldn’t he carry it as he travels? I can just as easily train with one of the soldiers’ blades. The clarity doesn’t exactly impact the handling--”

“It is not our place to question his judgment. Also, you’re not to step outside the castle while he’s away. He…” Naomi’s voice was strained, but despite her effort, she could not refrain from injecting just a tinge of the very disbelief she scolded Castiel for showing. “He believes… the deceiver is on the move.”

“ _Lucifer_ is entombed beneath a _mountain_ ,” Castiel said, incredulous. “Naomi, speak plainly. Can he… can this _belief_ be trusted, or has he truly become paranoid?”

“Castiel!” Naomi warned, forehead creased and eyebrows high. “We do not have the right to speak of him that way. And, at any rate, you would know better than I.”

Castiel frowned. Michael hadn’t said anything to him about it. Since Hannah’s death, Michael barely said _anything at all_ to Castiel. They hardly exchanged ten words in as many years. As close as Michael kept Naomi in that time, an outsider would be forgiven for thinking that she, not Castiel, was his heir. How could _Castiel_ know Michael’s thoughts better?

Naomi read the confusion on his face, and elaborated simply: “You would understand, because _you_ were twinned.”

Oh.

_“Castiel, we need to—”_ Hannah’s voice again, thin and far away and cut off mid-sentence, as if she was calling from another room this time. Between the two of them, he was getting a headache.

“If I’m going to be trapped here,” Castiel said, wincing with the effort of keeping his eyes on Naomi’s face rather than the space behind her. “I’d prefer to have some time to myself. Excuse me. Enjoy your supper.”

He didn’t know who he was talking to, really, Naomi or the specter-voice of Hannah in his mind, but it was Naomi who responded: Naomi, whose face was a battleground between concern and irritation, who pursed her lips, and who beckoned a guard in the doorway to mutter instructions that Castiel couldn’t make out.

Castiel winced at the scraping of his chair on the floor. Turning his back on her was never entirely comfortable, but it had to be done for him to leave and disappear into the stairwell.

At the landing, though, he froze – both figuratively and literally; he felt a chill that stilled him long enough to doubt his next step. Just in this one spot—

Ahead lay the armory and Anna, preparing to give him a primer on the use of a blade Castiel had only ever seen hanging at Michael’s side. The thought was exciting, in its way, but strange – Michael must truly believe in some event, or some change, to take a step like this.

To the right, though, was a door that led to a servant’s passage and a back stair that led out onto the upper bailey.

Hannah didn’t speak to him, then. She didn’t have to. When he looked at the door on the right, Castiel _felt_ her agreement, but also her tension, no different from the way he did when she was alive and standing next to him. Her presence was like a held breath, and then… an exhale. Had she been alive and with him now, their eyes would have met: _Now,_ she would have thought, _go now,_ and he would have known the thought as if it was his own.

His idea, his madness, or a spirit in his midst, there was no way to tell.

What must it feel like for Michael, with _his_ twin presumably alive? On the warpath or not, Castiel doubted if there was any severing that link.

He pushed the door just far enough to slide his body through the gap. Quickly, he picked up the pace, passing each gap between lit sconces a little faster than the last, urged on by the phantom sensation of something behind him until he broke free of the innermost wall.

Not to leave the castle while Michael is away, that was Naomi’s order. Well, Michael wouldn’t ride until morning – she’d said that, too. Technically, it wasn’t disobedience. If he was to be essentially a prisoner for a fortnight or more, then training could wait, but the fresh air could not.

There was movement to his left, in his peripheral vision.

“Turnip?” Castiel whispered to the dark, quiet bailey.

The aviary was in a tower far above him, but the few birds left who lived there were able to come and go as they pleased. The royal family made great use of pigeons and doves as messengers, and had for as long as anyone could remember. Since the castle begun to fall into disuse with so few inhabiting it, though, the aviary was somewhat ill-kept. The birds were looked after, but only _just_ enough to keep them in decent health, not enough to make the aviary a particularly pleasant place to spend time.

Hannah had loved it regardless -- it combined her favorite things: high altitude, airy spaces, and animals, birds in particular.

Turnip was not a pigeon, nor a dove. Turnip was a crow, a big one, who had moved into the aviary seemingly of her own accord after one or two visits during which Hannah had treated her to a spectacular array of snacks.

For some reason, Hannah had been intent on bringing them together, Turnip and Castiel, and somehow they’d both loved her enough to indulge her.

Now? Castiel supposed that with Hannah gone, Turnip was the being he was closest to in the world. What would happen when he lost her, too? How long could a crow live?

Where she emerged from, he could not tell – it was always this way with her. No matter which direction he looked for her, she’d always come from a different one.  She landed on his shoulder, buffeting him with her wing as she settled.

Castiel tilted his head toward the wall and the woods and raised his eyebrows – an invitation.

Turnip appeared to consider this for a moment, before leaping silently into the nook of an embrasure in the wall, and then, after a brief calibration, up onto the merlon next to it – her answer.

Pulling himself over a low section of the wall, Castiel followed her, and together they started to move carefully down the rocks at the side of the castle. Turnip, of course, hopped, flew, or glided much of the way with a kind of careless grace Castiel could never hope to match.

His foot slipped here and there, and the first uncontrolled slide when a rock gave way led to two more. At the bottom of the steep incline, Castiel looked up, back where he'd come from. There would be no going back this way.

He should have been more rueful about it, perhaps, but he couldn't seem to summon the feeling.

For a moment, he opened his mouth to say something to Hannah, before he realized she might not be listening. If her ghost was truly present, could it leave the castle? He'd never experimented with such a thing before, and all at once, he wasn't sure if the idea felt freeing or lonely.

Perhaps a bit of both.

There was a small stream at his feet, and beyond that, nothing but deep woods. The waxing moon did a decidedly mediocre job of penetrating the canopy, but there were enough gaps where the cold light could reach the leaf litter that he could pick his way among the dark trees.

At first, it was wonderful. The atmosphere inside had been stifling, the sheer _presence_ of his family – even the dead – seemed to swell and fill the whole fortress and press Castiel into a corner. Out here, he felt like he could breathe. Insects chittered against bark, frogs sang their grumbling lovesick ballads, and somewhere, a secretive corncrake called out from its hiding place. For once, he was not surveilled: life spun gloriously out everywhere around him, even as he walked among it, and it did not care about him at all.

Castiel let his path bend when he came upon impassable places, as there was no trodden road. He had to make his own way. Turnip made little flights over him, sometimes bursting up through the canopy to explore, other times flapping only just enough to make a jump from one tree to the next. She vanished from sight when she pleased, Castiel could only trust her to return eventually.

As much as he wanted to, though, Castiel couldn't get out of his own head entirely. The oat-colored cloak he wore was ultimately not enough to keep out the chill, even as he pulled it closer around him, and he couldn't quite turn off his worry over how far he'd get and the best route by which to discreetly return.

He and Hannah had played in these woods as children, but that was a long time ago now, and the landscape had clearly moved on, renewed itself, and become something entirely different. She was always the one with the better sense of direction anyway - Castiel recalled a lot of very specific bugs, leaves, and flowers, but not quite so many landmarks.

This became particularly clear when, with a great crash of leaves and water, he stumbled into a pond.

It was shallow and marshy, not even up to his chest, which made it all the more embarrassing despite his solitude. From his newly-drenched vantage point, Castiel could see the half-hidden stone that had betrayed him. He pulled himself out of the mud and silt and duckweed that now coated his clothes, and when he tried to wipe a little of it off his face, he realized there was enough mess on his hands to make the situation worse rather than better.

He glanced around for Turnip - she'd stuck fairly close to him up to this point, but was now nowhere to be seen -- maybe fleeing the splash of water from his fall, or startled by his shout. If he was to apologize, he'd have to find her, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back without her knowing where he’d gone.

"Turnip?" He hissed to the woods.

Not only did she not answer, but everything else had gone silent too, perhaps the result of the racket he'd made. No frogs, no insects, nothing. The quiet made the hairs on the back of Castiel's neck stand on end.

At this point, his mood had soured enough for him to lose nothing in admitting to himself that he was lost.

He caught a shadowy bounce in his peripheral vision, disappearing around a distant tree-trunk and moved gingerly toward it, slowly at first, and then quicker. Turnip had found a small clearing, at the center of which was a low mound of disturbed soil, covered in small stones. She was fixated on it, neck stretched and beak extended toward its center as if it emitted some sound that Castiel could not hear.

Something rustled behind him. He noticed, but didn't pay it any special attention - he didn't dare take his eyes off of Turnip. She was digging slightly in the dirt with the tip of her beak.

As if she'd insulted them, the stones began to move. Not much, to be fair, but the mound seemed to buzz, and the stones rattled softly against one another. Turnip fluttered her wings into an enhanced jump, but then resettled, curiosity overwhelming her natural skittishness.

Some leaves shuffled, and a twig snapped somewhere to Castiel's left.

It was good that he didn't look, he would think later, because at that moment, a dark gray thing shot out from the center of the mound. It was briefly unidentifiable due to sheer speed, and then it was revealed to be a large arm and hand, or rather a _claw._ As quickly as Turnip tried to launch away, it caught her quicker.

She _screeched,_ violently, at an incredible volume, as if she was making up for all the silence she'd kept in her entire life with sheer noise.

"Turnip!" Castiel shouted, now unfrozen. He flung himself bodily toward her. he managed to block the limb from retreating below the surface of the ground just in time, and wrapped both hands around the wrist. The force with which it pulled was a shock. Castiel did not let go, but neither did the claw, instead squeezing Turnip tight enough that Castiel worried her tiny bones might break

If he let go with either hand, the thing would surely take her below-ground, he was sure of that, so reaching for any sort of weapon would be impossible. He did the only thing he could think of:

He _bit_ the foul thing.

His teeth didn't sink far, but as soon as they had purchase, he clenched as hard he could. It was enough of a surprise for the claw to release, and Turnip to spring free. Castiel let go in turn, and the limb disappeared beneath the layer of stones.

Turnip and Castiel regarded one another, both terribly mussed and panting with effort. They didn't get a long rest, however -- there was a flash of movement at Castiel's left as something swiped at him. He couldn't tell what it was, only that it was large and bony and Castiel was pretty sure he'd seen a long snout.

The crow bolted, and the prince followed. _Things_ came out of the darkness at either side of them - spindly, slumping things like whatever had just taken a shot at the pair; small, waxy-looking fanged creatures in the trees; quick, webbed things with too many eyes that slithered along the ground - things like no animal Castiel had ever seen in life or even heard of in stories. He could sense their malice in the air like a fog.

He thought he was doing well at outpacing them at first, until he took a tumble down a steep rocky slope with a sheer rock face opposite him at the bottom.

Trapped. He was trapped. He could see them cresting the edge of the slope, closing in. Turnip landed at Castiel’s feet and let herself be gathered into his arms as he prepared to tell her to flee. He'd draw his blade and fight, as well as he was able for as long he could. He'd hold them off, and Turnip could fly away.

"I'll see you soon, I think." He muttered grimly to Hannah under his breath as he adjusted his grip on the silver handle.

All at once, the creatures stopped. Every single one of them froze, large and small, and through the clearing in the trees, the moon was a spotlight on their visible tension. They were afraid, which made Castiel all the more frightened - what could scare these monsters?

They all whirled around to face the opposite way, and, after a moment's wide-eyed fear, they began to wince. The ones with arms covered their ears, and the ones without arms fell to the ground and began to writhe and groan.

Whatever they were hearing, Turnip was largely unaffected. She did little flap as she climbed up onto Castiel’s shoulder and stretched her neck. There was no discomfort, only intrigue.

_...will flicker into light..._

It was a voice. A decidedly human-sounding voice, moderately deep - a man's voice, certainly. It was far away at first, but singing very clearly, so that even at a distance Castiel could make out the words to the song.

_…There's a power in every breath,_ it sang, _there's a power in every note…_

The onslaught was too much for the things, big and small, they were all equally miserable and each one fled, scrabbling away in random directions as soon as they could gather themselves.

The voice continued, very close now, in more of a subdued, wordless hum.

“Hey!” Castiel called out.

The voice stopped for a second, and over the edge of the slope, a face appeared. The man held up a dirty miner’s lantern, and its light spilled down into the crevasse. “Uh, hey to you too. You okay there, buddy?”

“Better now, certainly.” Castiel said softly, with no shortage of awe. Turnip took off from Castiel’s shoulder, scratching his skin by accident as he began the slow, inelegant climb up the slant. Turnip herself found a tree branch well above the man, and regarded him with suspicion. Castiel appreciated her concern.

The stranger knelt down and stretched out his free hand. As soon as he was in range, Castiel gratefully accepted it, crossing one thumb over the stranger’s and letting himself be pulled up and to his feet.

“Thank you for saving me. How did you do that?” Castiel dusted himself off as best he could, though it wasn’t much help, given the mud and the water and all, and he was suddenly all too aware of what a sight he must be.

Satisfied that he’d done his best to correct his unfortunate sartorial condition, Castiel looked up. Somehow he hadn’t realized just how close they were standing – close enough to practically count the man’s freckles.

The moon and the oil lamp cast competing shadows on his brow and the stubble of his cheek. Barring faint lines on his forehead, his face was smooth – he couldn’t be more than thirty-five by Castiel’s reckoning, but his eyes were wary enough to belong to someone older. In the dark, the man’s pupils were so big Castiel couldn’t even make out the color of his eyes, but they were active and appraising, tracing quick paths all over Castiel’s face so openly he could almost feel their movement on his skin.

“What do you mean?” The stranger asked, realizing himself and taking a half-step back.

“I—” Castiel caught sight of the tip of the man’s tongue dart out from between his lips for just a fraction of a second, which briefly distracted his thoughts. “Those creatures. They fled as you approached. How did you do it?”

“Not from around here, huh?” He said, clearly without any recognition at all of who he addressed.

“It’s that obvious?” Castiel elected to say.

“Kind of,” He explained. “For one thing, _around here_ isn’t exactly what you’d call teeming with people, I know pretty much everybody in the village. Besides that, everyone in the _kingdom_ knows about the Goblins and their pets – well, except people from the castle, or so I hear. Dean, by the way.”

“I’m… from the castle, since I was a child.” Castiel skirted and bent the truth, unsure himself as to why he was doing it. He wondered if there was some universe parallel to this one where he was honest and regal – _I’m Prince Castiel, I insist you lead me back to the castle at once,_ etcetera. For some reason, he didn’t want the man – Dean – to see him that way. “The Goblins I’d heard of, but never seen. The… pets, though…” Castiel glanced backward with a shudder.

“They hate music, any kind. You ain’t gotta be any good – I’m sure as hell not,” Dean said with a conspiratorial smirk, which gave Castiel a shot of warmth through his chest despite disagreeing entirely with the premise that the singing was poor. “Just sing any old thing and they’ll usually run for the hills, long as you’re above-ground. Doesn’t _always_ work, especially if there’s a lot of ‘em like that. Kind of thought I was in for a fight when I saw them, but it looks like we both got lucky.”

Castiel furrowed his brow, and looked off to one side. “If any kind of music works, including bad music, how do they know the difference between music and other sound?”

Dean’s mouth opened, then closed again, and he worried at his lip. “Alright, that’s gonna haunt me, thanks. Hey… wait, so you _are_ from the castle? I didn’t think they let almost anybody out of there except on festival days, or when they send messengers. It’s the middle of the night and you’re not in the uniform, so I’m gonna go ahead and say neither those apply here. You running away or something?”

All of the sudden, Castiel found his filthy shoes very interesting. Turnip gave a low _caw_ that sounded almost like a warning.

“I’m not gonna snitch on you, man,” Dean assured. “Guess I’m just trying to figure out whether you need directions toward the castle or away from it.”

“I should probably go back,” Castiel admitted.

“...But you don’t want to, though, am I right?”

“Not especially.”

“Alright,” Dean said, and it was half speech, half sigh, like a man trying to make a compromise. “It’s cold out here, and I make no guarantees those things won’t come back madder. What do you say we go get a little _antifogmatic_ while you make your mind up?”

“Where?” Castiel drew his brows down into his squint, looking around as if an alehouse would appear by magic.

“Don’t you worry about that, just follow me, I know a place – ‘s where I was headed anyway.” With that, Dean took off walking.

“Are you sure this is a good idea? Is it wise for me to be seen?”

“Like I said,” Dean paused impatiently. “I’m not gonna snitch, and you can bet nobody where we’re going will either. We’re all got secrets. Whatever yours is, it’s safe with a bunch of drunk miners, I promise. They probably won’t even remember you tomorrow.”

Castiel wasn’t so sure, but he followed after anyway.

“What do you want them to call you?” Dean asked, brushing aside a branch and holding it long enough to let Castiel pass as well. In response to Castiel’s frown, he elaborated: “I may be dumb, but I’m not _stupid_ . You didn’t give me your name when I gave you mine. I’m sure you got your reasons and it’s probably not my business, but _I’d_ like to call you _something,_ and the folks where we’re going’ll likely feel the same. So, who d’you wanna be tonight?”

Something about the smile that accompanied those last few words was contagious. Dean was giving Castiel a kind of freedom and space he’d never really known. After a moment’s thought, he chose: “Emmanuel.”

 

* * *

 

 

Dean obviously found the name unwieldy enough to start shortening it almost immediately, but rather than being annoyed, it made Castiel feel warm, even welcomed. He'd never had a nickname before, even a fake one.

The Stonehole was aptly named: it was built into the notch beneath a natural outcropping of stone, and the mountain itself made up two of the walls, as well as a section of the floor. The outside bore no signage or label, much like the many unidentifiable bottles cluttering the area behind the unfinished wooden bar. There were a few tables with chairs, all mismatched and seemingly handmade by an amateur. Many of them had little blocks of wood or folded-up paper beneath at least one leg.

Castiel was too polite (and self-preserving) to say so, but he considered that it might be for the best that the light was dim, produced entirely by clusters of the same kind of oil lamp Dean carried.

Shabby or not, it was still a sight for sore eyes – warm, dry, and playing host to a customer base that, Castiel considered, seemed to be equally warm. He forgot most of their names almost immediately after being introduced, but did manage to recall the name of Dean’s brother.

Sam, tall enough that his head brushed against the low ceiling, was easy to remember - while the others had hardly noticed (let alone been impressed) when Dean had introduced him with _Em here works at the castle_ , Sam had a much more memorable reaction: his eyes lit up with excitement and he drew breath as if to start asking a thousand questions, and then they made eye contact, and all the color drained from his face.

"What did you say his name was?" Sam asked Dean, without taking his eyes off Castiel.

"Em -- Emmanuel," Dean answered, his gaze jumping back and forth between them.

"Dean, can I talk to you for a second? Outside?" The pitch of Sam's voice went up, and he got up from his chair and moved toward the door in a scramble, without ever taking his eyes off Castiel, as if Castiel was a threat.

Dean frowned, held up a mollifying hand to Castiel, and then followed his brother outside.

"You and Sam ever met?" The bartender, who'd been so friendly as to be almost maternal when they'd entered, leveled a suspicious gaze at Castiel all of the sudden.

"Not to my knowle--"

Dean came back through the door, rubbing his hands through his hair. Sam was on his heels.

"Everything alright?" The bartender checked in.

"All fine, yep, everything's... fine." Sam took back his chair, but his posture wasn't relaxed anymore. He sat up straight when he addressed Castiel, "I uh... I don't suppose I could ask you a few questions? About what it's like at the castle?"

"Sammy, the man's clearly tryin' to get away from all that tonight," Dean admonished.

Castiel assured them both it was alright, but they only got through two or three before the expression on Dean's face reached peak terseness and he dragged Castiel off on the pretense of another drink.

“Sorry about him. He wanted to work there, when we were kids. Probably still does,” Dean grumbled, leaning on the bar. “I don’t know, maybe I should have let him. He’s a lot smarter than I am, maybe he could have done something better than just digging up rocks. I just don’t like the idea of him going where I can’t keep an eye on him, know what I mean? If anything happened to him…”

Castiel watched Dean’s eyes (green, he realized) go out of focus. “It would be unbearable."

"That's putting it lightly. You got a brother?"

"Sister. And... _had_."

"Shit, man."

"It's almost our birthday," Castiel admitted into his drink, and then froze, realizing that in those four words, there was more than enough information to completely reveal him. He closed his eyes and huffed out a long breath through his nose. He could just kick himself for letting the drink (whatever it was - it was stronger than beer by a mile and tasted different from anything Castiel had ever had before) loosen his tongue to that extent.

"Relax. Sam clocked you the second you walked in, I told you, he's crazy about the royal stuff. Probably got a picture of you in one of his books or something, but hey, I promised you your secret'd be safe with us, no matter what it was, and I take that seriously, so... relax." He stopped, and then added: "I get it. Man, if Sammy died, well... if all you do is run off once in awhile, I'd say you're doing pretty good."

"No one's ever said that to me before," Castiel muttered. Despite his earlier self-flagellation, he took a long, deep drink, draining the pewter tankard.

"Geez. Royals just as cold as everyone says, huh? Shit, nope, don't answer that, look at me, I'm as bad as Sammy." Dean rolled his eyes at his own behavior.

A laugh punched its way out of Castiel at that, and Dean's reaction was wonderful: he laughed too, and looked ten years younger when he did it. There was a sort of feedback loop of easy companionship, only darkened by the realization that he'd known Dean all of a couple hours and he could already be more open with him that he could with his own family.

"Let me get you another one of those," Dean offered, and Castiel handed over his cup. "For the road."

They talked further, after that, and while Castiel would later struggle to recall exactly what was said, he already knew, as they drank that last draught (the best-tasting one so far, he thought hazily) that he wasn't likely to forget the way he felt. It was all warmth.

Warmth slid down his throat from the mysterious local specialty, it lit up his cheeks from the intoxication, it baked on his hands where they sat inches from Dean's next to a lamp, and it curled in his chest every time Dean teased or laughed or sympathized or was ready with a quip far faster than Castiel had ever been in his life. He found himself enjoying even the jokes he didn't particularly understand, and Dean seemed to soak up the appreciativeness of his audience.

The feeling lingered, even after they bundled back up and went out into the cold of the  wee hours. The bartender gamely filled up both the oil in Dean's lantern, and the liquor in a flask that Dean produced from somewhere inside one of his layers of clothing. Only when Dean thanked her did Castiel realize her name was Ellen.

"You sure you don't need anybody to go with you?" Sam worried in the door-frame. "Things can get kind of hairy this time of night."

"We're good, Sammy. You get home and get some shuteye."

Sam nodded, and the dim panel of light spilling out from the door narrowed until it disappeared entirely.

"Alright _Emmanuel,_ where we headed?"

"You don't have to call me that," Castiel surrendered to the reality of the situation.

"Okay... Cas, then." Dean nicknamed him all over again, and the sheer audacity of someone shortening his _actual_ name pulled a low chuckle from Castiel in response.

"I should be back before dawn," Castiel said by way of answer.

"Well..." Dean put his hand between his eyes and the lamp light for a moment and squinted at what they could see of the sky through the trees. "It'll be close. I can't promise anything, but we'll try."

They did try, both of them, but they were also both fairly drunk and still drinking. Dean was more than happy to share the sizeable flask he carried, and Castiel was no less pleased to take the swigs he was offered. They took turns with it, Castiel stumbling once, unable look away from Dean's neck, bared when he tilted his head back for a swallow.

They helped one another up the side of one tree-covered slope, and going down the pebbly opposite side, Dean slipped and stumbled. It was pure luck that Castiel was in a position that allowed him to catch Dean without falling over himself.

Passing through a copse of trees, Dean was the first to catch sight of something sitting on a rock. It was shaped like a woman with long hair, but the clothes were ragged and there was something bent and gnarled about the shape of her. The position she sat in was almost animalistic. When Castiel opened his mouth, Dean clapped one hand to his face and pulled him close, so they could hide behind the same wide tree.

It was fine, really – the moment their bodies touched, Castiel forgot what he was going to say anyway.

Dean mouthed almost-silently: “Goblin. Count of three. Sing. Anything. Loud.”

He raised one finger, then a second, and then with a bit of a flourish, the third.

They weren’t singing anything close to the same song. Dean was belting out some randomly-selected section of the same tune Castiel had heard before, something about _a power that starts within the heart, a power that rises through the throat,_ Castiel was singing what he remembered from a choir number performed for Michael’s birthday. They didn’t get a lot of music, and he wasn’t sure he was doing it right, but he did his inebriated best.

It was a completely ridiculous cacophony, but sure enough, the woman’s head whipped around, her face screwed up in misery (complete with the black eyes and double sets of horns Castiel expected to see) and _poof –_ she took off running on all fours.

“We got her! TAKE THAT, GOBLIN BITCH!” Dean shouted into the trees, between laughing so hard he could hardly stand up straight.

“What’s so funny?” Castiel peered at Dean, amused and puzzled all at once.

“I told you, man! Did you see her _face?_ Damn, I wish Sammy could have seen that, it was _perfect!_ ”

Dean put one hand on Castiel’s shoulder, bracing himself through a couple more waves of cackling, and the mirth was contagious, even if Castiel wasn’t quite as demonstrative about it. When Dean pulled himself up again, they both realized how close they were standing, almost nose to nose. Castiel’s eyes landed on Dean’s, after making a brief stop at Dean’s lips – slightly parted.

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

“Cas, I uh…” Dean’s hand started to come up like he was going to rest it somewhere on Castiel again, but he must have thought better of it because instead, he tensed his jaw with a little huff and started to turn off in the direction they were traveling instead. “Castle’s this way. ‘S almost dawn, we can make it if we hustle.”

The remainder of the trip was brief and mostly quiet. Castiel followed along, feeling increasingly sober, knowing it was likely just the effect of time, but unable to shake the idea that it was proximity to the castle.

They came around the corner of a crag, and there it was: the castle, stabbing up into the slowly lightening sky. All Castiel had to do was walk through the guardhouse and across the bridge.

“Well, here y’are.” Dean gestured, a little gruffly. He rubbed the back of his neck. “All the sudden lookin’ at it, I get the urge to call you something a little more royal than ‘Cas.’”

“Don’t. And, Dean…”

“Yeah?”

“I want to thank you, for helping me.” Castiel said. What he was going to do next made him so anxious his hands tingled, but he reminded himself that in all likelihood, this was the last they’d see of one another, so it hardly mattered. “I’d like to give you a kiss.”

Dean looked all at once like someone had punched all the air out of his lungs. All he could do was nod mutely. There was no way to know what he was thinking.

He rested one hand on Dean’s jaw and leaned forward to press his lips softly, briefly, against Dean’s.

“Um,” Dean said when they separated, “Right. I’ll uh… see you around.”

“Right,” Castiel nodded, despite the fact that this was almost certainly not true, and turned to head across the bridge and toward the castle.

Whatever awaited him, he was ready for it.  


	2. Brothers and Sisters

Walking back home was a lot simpler and safer in the daylight, but Dean’s exhaustion turned his boots to stone. He took note of where the moon was visible even in the morning sky. A quick mental calculation told him which moon it was.

How many weeks did they have until the rains came? He’d have to get his team to check the channels in the mine again. The barriers had had to be rebuilt after the cave-in, and the new ones were untested. If those failed and the place flooded, Dean estimated the losses would be… well, he shuddered to think of it. Worst case, if the first storm was a bad one, the whole place could be destroyed, with everyone inside.  

Things were fragile right now, moreso than usual.

The little house at the edge of the village might as well have been a grand manor house for how glad he was to see it when it came into view. Just laying his hand on the doorknob sent a frisson up his arm as he pictured himself falling into bed for a few hours before work began. 

As with most such pleasant moments, it was short. Any hope for rest was crushed the second he crossed the threshold and found Sam at the kitchen table, worrying over a piece of suspiciously thick paper. 

"Dean!" Sam’s head had jerked upward at the sound of the door and he was on his feet immediately, crossing the room in maybe a stride and a half and gathering Dean into his arms. Dean didn't refuse the affection, but he frowned a silent question around Sam's shoulder. 

"Not that I mind, Sammy, but what gives? I walked to the castle and back, I didn't exactly go off to war." 

"Yeah, well," Sam’s jaw was set and his mouth was tensed into a grimace. "Some uniformed guy on horseback beat you here by about an hour, and he brought… well, can you blame me being glad to see you after  _ this _ ?”

The heavyweight parchment was pressed into Dean's hand, and it took him a moment to register the words. It was an odd missive - half invitation, half injunction. It had a short list of names - soldiers, attacked and killed in the same woods Dean had just been in for much of the night, likely around the same time he was acting as royal escort. No wonder Sam had worried. 

The script seemed too elegant for such a grim message. In one breath it warned the villagers about unnecessary nighttime strolls, and in the next, invited them to cross that very same forest for the memorial service. Dean had a hard time not rolling his eyes at that. 

"Tomorrow, huh? Well, You can go, right? You like all that royal stuff. ‘Sides, I haven’t seen the kid since he joined up. He didn’t even come back for festivals." Dean tried maybe-a-little-too-hard to sound unaffected, tossing the cardstock back onto the unfinished tabletop with an air of finality that said he hoped there’d be no argument.

Sam argued, of course. "I hardly remember him at all. We both have to go, and you know it. For the village.  _ That’s _ not what we have to talk about.”

Dean sunk into the chair. The information Sam wanted was relevant -- Dean had been out there at the same time as Asa and the other soldiers, he’d seen one of the Goblins, and if something was changing out there, it’d be smart to make sure everybody knew about it. That didn’t make him any more comfortable as he spoke, and he most certainly stuck to the point. There were details Sam didn’t need. 

"So you  _ did  _ see a Goblin," Sam said, once the story was told. "How do you think they got the drop on  _ soldiers? _ "

Dean shook his head. "It's weird. Something must have 'em juiced up, or whatever. Can you imagine if me and Cas hadn't caught that one by surprise? Or if she hadn’t been on her own?"

A slow smile spread on Sam's face, like a kid finding the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle on the floor. "You’re uh… on a nickname basis, huh?”

"I didn't know he was all frou frou when I met him,” he excused, getting up from the table abruptly, trying to end that conversation before it started.

He never really found the time to rest, in the end. He'd just have to work as he was. A spring cave-in several months back had taken a lot of good guys and left everyone in the area grieving someone. In Dean’s case, and Sam’s, it was the uncle who’d raised them. They were all left with reduced numbers -- combine that with the jackass new foreman and the inexorable draining of the mine... meeting the ever-increasing demand from abroad took more and more sweat and toil.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

There just wasn’t the time -- or money -- to be tired.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Castiel couldn't focus.

Somewhere in another universe, Naomi stood before him in the cool morning sun of the lower bailey, her face like ice. She was giving him the shorter, more discreet version of the more dramatic dressing-down he expected would come later. He'd caught the beginning of the lecture, something about  _ a difficult time of year for all of us  _ and  _ the last Thaumaturge kingdom  _ and  _ put emotions aside, _ but he tuned out most of it. If someone held a knife to his throat and demanded he repeat her words, he would almost certainly die. 

Hannah was here. 

Not in the usual way - he wasn't hearing her voice, and while the entire previous night seemed very much dreamlike, he was almost positive that he was awake. And yet, there she was, standing as clear as anything in a tower window. Even at a distance, there was no mistake. Her sable hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, and she wore the gray dress in which she'd been buried. 

He tried to match that specific tower opening with his mental map of the castle where he'd lived almost his entire life. (He'd been told that he lived with his father for almost a year after being born, but he had no memory of such, no matter how many times Naomi tried her tricks to dig the memories from him to learn their father's location.)

"--dead, because of your impulsiveness" Naomi hissed. 

It got Castiel's attention. "What?"

Naomi just turned her head to the left. 

Completely taken out of his obsession with the tower window, it hit Castiel that Anna had been standing off to one side this entire time. Her feet were shoulder-width apart, her arms clasped behind her back, and her eyes were rimmed with red, but locked straight forward, nevertheless. Behind her, positioned identically, was a five-by-five formation of some of the small nation's most elite soldiers.

Except, they weren't _ exactly _ five by five today. Four spaces in the formation were empty. 

"I don't understand." Castiel's eyes went wide, because while he was telling the truth, his mind was already spinning out a theory. 

"You left supper, and disappeared. Castiel, we all have our duties. I function as Steward. Anna,” Naomi gestured to Anna at the head of her depleted squad, “leads our troops. As the heir apparent, your duty, the  _ only _ truly non-negotiable thing that has  _ ever _ been asked of you, is that you  _ stay alive.  _ Did you imagine that you could simply vanish without anyone being sent after you?"

"But... how could they--"

"Demons, in the woods," Naomi spat. "You took your little pleasure stroll, and thankfully  _ you  _ were somehow unharmed, but the soldiers sent after you were not so lucky."

"They were armed," Castiel argued, "With crystal weapons, presumably. We dispelled a Goblin merely by  _ singing,  _ how were  _ they  _ overtaken?"

For a fraction of a second, Castiel thought he saw Anna break her forward gaze to regard him with some strange, unreadable expression. Surprise? Confusion? It was too quick for him to tell. 

"I guess we'll never know," Naomi clipped. "We'll discuss this singing business, as well as who you mean by  _ we,  _ later. Get inside. The caskets are in the main hall. Pay your respects before their families arrive. We'll expect you to make an appearance, given that they died in your service."

Castiel was torn: on the one hand, he wanted to spend as little time anywhere near the soldiers' bodies as possible. On the other, he felt the obligation acutely. He couldn't help but imagine what Hannah's face had looked like in her own final resting place. The idea that someone responsible for her death might stroll casually by sent a bolt of rage down his spine, so he lingered, and tried to focus on the weight of his guilt. 

He  _ owed  _ them this concentration - he tried not to think about Hannah's face in the tower, and he  _ really  _ tried not to think about the previous night, and Dean.

The hall beyond the grand, arched doors was darkened, lit only by candles, and approaching the opening gave the impression of walking into an enormous, yawning mouth that would consume him. He glanced up toward the tower window where he'd seen Hannah, but she was gone. 

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


The weather had warmed by the time Dean and Sam hiked out to the adit. 

Word about Asa had spread with the sort of speed only bad news and gossip can achieve, and rumors were plenty: that he'd been killed by the royal family for "knowing too much" (whatever that meant,) that he'd been working with Goblins and they betrayed him, or he betrayed them, that he'd been turned  _ into  _ a Goblin somehow, that he'd killed himself because of the pressure of working at the castle -- Dean thought it was all a little dramatic, but mining was, above all else,  _ boring _ , and guys would come up with the tallest of tales just to have something to talk about down there. 

Never was that truer than now. In the hot, dark burrows of the mountain, there was one topic they were all in silent agreement to avoid: the slow death of the mine itself. There was no argument; the halcyon days of this particular hole in the ground were over, but no one wanted to say so lest they somehow make it truer than it already was.

A day was going to come when the bounty of these rocks would be spent, or close enough to it, and then what? The ground was shit, the winters lasted forever, and nobody really knew how to do anything productive but mine and trade. 

Dean wasn't worried for himself. He suspected there was a good chance he'd be dead by then, or close enough that it wouldn’t matter, but Sammy was not only smart enough enough to live longer, one of these days he was gonna get married, have a whole passel of kids. What about them? 

Did Cas know? Did any of them? Dean had always assumed that the royals had a plan, but Cas hadn’t even known to sing when he saw the Goblins’ pet monsters. What did they  _ teach _ him in that castle? 

He swung his pick a little harder into the rock when he thought of it -- not a single one of them probably ever did a real day’s work, and he wondered if they cared at all, if they’d make a single sacrifice when the time came, or if they’d just hole up in their little castle and leave everyone to fend for themselves. 

Still, for all that his family sounded callous, Cas himself didn’t seem so bad. Dean’s tongue ran over his dry lips, and he remembered that odd little kiss. Was that a Thaumaturge thing? Thanks to Sammy’s insatiable appetite for books, he’d heard of cultures to the east where men kissed one another that way to say hello. Maybe it was like that. 

Dean tried to bury the fact that he was a little disappointed by the idea. Not that he exactly saw himself as the kind of person who was likely to get the affection of a prince to start with -- a prince could take whatever lover he wanted, sure, but Dean very much doubted those lovers tended to spend a lot of time covered in rock dust.

"I gotta take a piss," Dean announced. He set down his tools gently - he'd have liked to drop them with a satisfying  _ clang _ but he didn’t have the money to be repairing them any sooner than necessary. In reality, he just needed a break of almost any kind - he'd merely chosen the reason that would attract the least scowling from the new foreman.

Of course, that didn't mean  _ no _ scowling. If a day came that Crowley didn't scowl even once, Dean thought the world might end. There was something dangerous about him. Dean couldn't figure out what it was, since the man didn’t seem to cut an intimidating figure, but his intuition seldom steered him wrong, so he let it give him pause.

Once he was out of sight, Dean slumped against the curved wall. He was sweating like mad and his muscles howled. Turned out that walking half the night and drinking the other half without sleeping actually had consequences, who knew?  _ Getting old,  _ he thought to himself.  

Next time this mountain decided to claim someone, would it be him?

Dean let his head rest against a tall, flat bit of rock. If he didn't know any better, he could swear he heard something inside it, like voices. It had to be an echo, or some weird way the sound was traveling. Still, he caught himself pressing his ear a little harder, just to make sure. 

On the first press, the rock shifted. He didn't think almost anything of it, he wasn't sure if it was the rock or his head that moved, until it shifted again, and by the time he realized what was happening, it was too late. It gave way completely, tumbling into an open space Dean would have sworn moments earlier didn't exist at all. It was solid rock, it  _ had _ to be solid rock, there was just no way…

All of these thoughts passed uselessly through his head as he fell.

At the time, it didn't feel lucky, but later he'd realize just how lucky he was when he caught the slope beyond with his hip and not his head.       

As he rolled and slid and bumped down the near-vertical face of rock, he heard Sam hoarsely shouting his name, followed by a scrabbling sound.

By the time he shouted  _ (Sam, don’t--)  _ it was already too late. 

He tried to grasp onto an outcrop, but it broke off in his hand. For his next trick, he tried to use his feet to slow his descent, but only ended up catapulting himself forward over them, slamming shoulder-first into a ledge, and hitting the opposite wall again on the way down. 

Finally, he hit the ground.

Sam wasn't long after, though since he'd jumped through the gap above on purpose, his landing was considerably more controlled. Well, Dean would see to that -- he ignored his scrapes and bruises so he could drag himself to his feet and give Sam a hard shove right into the cave wall.

"The  _ hell  _ are you thinking?" Dean demanded. 

Sam just laughed, infuriatingly. "What, I was supposed to... Oh, Dean's fallen down a hole, no problem, I'll just get back to work then?"

"Idiot." Dean push off him and dusted himself off. "I mean, how about a  _ rope _ or something?"

"Look," Sam pointed to where they'd come from, "If they even find a rope long enough, they can haul us  _ both _ up, and I'll still have been right not to leave you down here alone. Face it, Dean: Nothing you say is going to make me regret jumping in after you."

"Hence, idiot," Dean repeated. "Wait. Why can I see you?"

"Uh, you still have ey--oh. Yeah," Sam looked around for the source of the soft, hazy light that made it possible to see around the space. It wasn't much, but it was more than the hole at the top should have been able to throw. He frowned, and his voice dropped to a whisper: "You hear that?"

Dean frowned right alongside him, listening intently. He  _ did  _ hear it, the same noise he'd heard on the other side of the rock up top. Down here it was clearer, and he could see how he would have gotten confused about where it was coming from. There was a rhythmic banging and clanking of stone on stone, and metal on stone, and under that, a rising and falling grumble like the wheels of an old cart.

It sounded for all the world like  _ mining _ , or possibly construction, or both. 

Dean and Sam shared a look that started as a question, and somehow ended with agreement. Naturally, Dean took point, and they crept carefully along the narrow natural corridor in the direction where the light was brighter. 

As the space widened, the noise got closer, or rather they got closer to it. 

The first to peer around the edge was Dean, and it only took a short glance for him to jerk back behind the wall like he'd been shocked. He didn't speak at first, he was quiet, working his jaw as he tried to process. 

"What?" Sam demanded in a hiss, "What is it, what did you see?"

"We're fucked," Dean answered. "Goblins. Digging, building, I don't even know what. Tons of 'em."

Sam fixed Dean with an expression that was half bafflement and half concern. "You can't... that's not..."

"I know. I know."

"They can't  _ build,  _ Dean, they're practically  _ feral _ ..." Sam paused for a long time, watching Dean's face carefully. "...right?"

"That's what  _ I _ thought!" Dean whisper-shouted. "That's what everyone always told  _ me.  _ Goblins don't work together, don't plan ahead, don't use tools,  _ barely _ communicate…” Everything Dean had ever been taught about Goblins was being disproved right around the corner from where he was standing. Not that there was much in his stomach, but he thought he might throw up.

“You’re sure they’re Goblins?” Sam reasoned.

“I know a damn Goblin when I see one,” Dean shot back. “Unless you know a lot of  _ humans  _ with black eyes and horns on the front of their heads?”

Sam shuffled around Dean, got one look at the expansive cavern beyond, and shuffled back up against the wall again with a lot less blood in his face. 

_ "See?"  _ Dean gestured.

"Okay, okay," Sam tried and failed to be soothing, interrupted as he was by an enormous blast that made both of them jump and then wince. 

It sounded like a tuba, or some other kind of horn, but a thousand times louder. Almost in unison, tools clattered to the ground and some strange kind of chatter started up among the Goblins. Dean couldn't make out a word of it. He pushed Sam farther back into the dimness of their little passage, because the Goblins were clearly on the move. 

 

 

* * *

  
  
  


The guards posted around the edges of the hall wouldn’t meet Castiel’s eyes.

When at last he could leave the hall, he made his way to the bath. Someone must have known he was coming (he supposed he must still look a mess, after all) because the bath was already drawn for him, pearlescent with herbs and soaps and steaming lightly. The guard here gave him a cursory acknowledgment, but it was about as cold as anyone employed by the castle could likely get away with.

The defenders inside the castle walls were regularly rotated – in all likelihood, most of them knew at least one of the deceased, and they all had to know that it was only the luck of the moment that they hadn’t been among them.

He could have scolded them, he could have disciplined them, he could have fired them and sent them home in shame, every last one that he caught looking askance or treating him differently now, but he didn’t. He couldn’t blame them even the littlest bit, not even privately to himself.

Castiel peeled off one layer and then another, and stepped naked into the bath. The water wrapped around him, and he felt he might dissolve into it. That wouldn’t be the worst thing, anyway.

He let his eyes fall shut.

In dreams, he saw bird’s feathers the color of a summer sky, and he felt Hannah’s hand in his. His feet moved beneath him, and he stood before the wall of his bedchamber. Hannah’s hand guided his and pressed his palm to a wide wooden panel.

  
  
  


* * *

 

 

 

Despite their roughly human-shaped appearance, the Goblins ran on all fours - that much hadn't changed. Dean liked that. One small piece of his reality was  _ not _ shattered, and he clung to that. 

They were all headed in the same direction, that much was obvious. Dean held his arm out to bar the passageway, as if Sam needed to be stopped from running into the stampede. The crowd thinned, and after the last one passed, they waited for a long moment to be sure the coast was clear. 

Dean looked back at Sam and gave him nod, and together they crept out into the open.

Sam was the first to speak, and what he said was,  _ “Damn.” _

“Yeah,” was all Dean could say in response. The open cavern was so tall that the ceiling receded into the darkness. 

The light that had gotten their attention in the first placed turned out to have a multitude of sources: stolen oil lamps, standing torches, seemingly randomly-placed fires -- the air was foul, though still breathable. Dean wasn’t sure if Goblins needed oxygen, but fire definitely did, so he figured there must be boreholes somewhere for the smoke to get out and new air to get in, though he couldn’t readily find them.

“So?” Sam looked one direction, then the other. 

Dean jerked his head in the direction the Goblins went. “Maybe I’m nuts…”

“Granted.”

“...But don’t you feel like, I don’t know, like we don’t really have a choice here?” 

A long moment passed. Then, Sam answered, in a testing tone: “We could be killed.”

“Or, we could find out what the hell’s going on and stop  _ anyone else _ from getting killed.”

“Or both,” Sam said, but the look on his face said that Dean had already won. “What do you think dad would have done?”

“Dad?” Dean laughed, then. Sam was too young to really remember either of their parents, practically all he knew was the stories Dean told him. “One hand would have the two of us by our ears for ending up down here in the first place, the other’d be swinging a pickaxe at any one of those things that had the misfortune to get in range. But… Sammy, we don’t have to be like him, you know that.”

“So you keep saying. But y’know, I think Bobby’d go down there too, if he was still around.” Sam pointed out.  

“He wouldn’t want  _ us _ to,” Dean countered. “But if it was him down here?”

Their eyes met, and matching smiles - wicked ones - took over their faces. 

Dean was about to say  _ shall we,  _ but he realized that at some point in this debate, they’d both already started walking. There was never any question. If he was honest, he’d say the whole thing was terrifying, but somehow he couldn’t visualize making any other choice, and he knew Sam well enough to be confident he felt the same. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


 

When Castiel woke, the water was cool. Turnip was perched on the edge of the tub. When she saw him stir, she leaped silently off and hopped through the cracked door and into the corridor. It was strange, she seldom spent any time within the castle walls, aside from roosting in a windowsill from time to time. She certainly didn’t tend to fly down hallways. His muddied clothes had been taken as he slept, and he covered his damp skin in the dry, clean replacements. The image of his dream swirled in his head.

Castiel reflected on how completely and utterly wrong he’d been just hours before. He could never have been ready for any of this. All he wanted was to clear his head a little and things were more muddled than ever. He hovered in the doorway to his bedchamber. 

Turnip was not on the windowsill at all, but rather on the floor at the foot of the bed, sitting like an ancient statue. Her unblinking stare was fixed at a single point on the inner wall opposite the bed. 

There was nothing on the wall there but a tapestry, hung during the redecoration after Hannah's death. It hadn't moved or changed - everything looked completely ordinary. 

"Turnip?" Castiel approached her gingerly.

She trilled deep in her throat without taking her eyes off the wall and her feathers fluffed up until she looked like a bottle-brush.

Castiel wasn't sure if the feeling he had was from watching her, or if he was reacting simultaneously to whatever had her so agitated. In any case, a new wave of goosebumps rippled over his body - if he’d had fur or feathers, he’d look no different from Turnip - and his heart fluttered. He couldn't help remembering the claw from below the ground in the forest, some part of him was ready to scoop up his anxious pet and run away. 

Instead, he edged closer to the tapestry. 

His hand shook as he reached for the hem. His grip firm, he swept the tapestry back, bringing his other arm up to guard his face. Turnip skittered off to one side, taking to the air just long enough to bank and alight on the knob of the bedpost.

Behind the tapestry there was a wide panel of wood, too wide to be a regular part of the wall. Castiel traced the wood-grain with his hand, and then pulled it away as if he'd been burnt. The image of a feather was etched there.

The second touch was incredibly delicate, as if he was afraid the wall might bite him. A dark line appeared on the wood a little above Castiel's head, and the newly-formed door swung away from him. Turnip sprung from the bedknob and zipped through the door into the darkness beyond. "I was going to go in anyway," Castiel muttered as he followed. 

"Castiel!" Hannah called from somewhere ahead, and Castiel's heart jumped in his chest.

When the door shut behind him, it was almost pitch black. He stumbled slowly, carefully past unidentifiable clutter, and when he held out his arms, he caught dusty-feeling cobwebs that made him cringe. Still, he pressed on, even as the corridor bent and twisted. His feet found a step up, and then another, and another. The spiral steps seemed to go on for ages, curling around a smooth central pillar, and just when he thought they might go all the way into the sky itself, his outstretched hands collided with something solid. 

The solid thing swung away, just the same as the door behind the tapestry, and his vision filled with light.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


 

The path narrowed up ahead. For a second, Dean thought it looked like it was the cavern contracting. It took getting closer before they realized what was really going on. 

The  _ path _ was thin, but if anything, the cavern was actually  _ bigger  _ here. What looked like path was actually a railless, narrow stone bridge across an enormous chasm. One side was filled about halfway up with black water that churned against the wall they stood upon, as more rushed in from some uncertain place. The other side was little more than a trickle. 

“A dam,” Sam murmured what Dean was thinking. “Dean, this is… There’s no way. We’ve seen those things. There’s no way they could build something like this.”

“Yeah,” Dean grumbled, “I gotta be honest, if I wasn’t seeing it myself and you told me about it, I’d think you’d lost your marbles.”

“I’m not sure I  _ haven’t. _ Are we sure this isn’t natural?”

“Does it  _ look  _ natural to you?” Dean gestured around to the even, strategic cuts in the stone, the straight lines of the barrier. 

“No,” Sam’s face was grim.

They both went quiet after that. The light from either side of the dam was scant at the middle, and the thing got so narrow they couldn’t walk abreast. Dean, for his part, was too focused on his footing to say a thing. 

Only once they got to the other side and looked back, he said what they’d both been thinking: “The scary question isn’t how. It’s why.”

There was only one way to go, and that was forward. Past a narrow opening, the next chamber opened tall and lean. There were holes, like doors, set into the walls - not only along the ground, but along the torch-lined spiral platform that wound its way all the way up the space, like some kind of inverted beehive. A few inches of that brackish water stood at ground-level, as still as as a mirror. 

“It’s like they hollowed out the whole damn mountain,” Dean said. 

“You don’t think…” Sam paused.

“What?”

“The cave-in...” 

That was a lot to ponder, for the both of them. In the quiet that followed, they heard a voice. At the top of the spiral, far above them, one of the door-holes was bigger than the rest. It sounded like it was coming from there. Dean looked at Sam, and found him looking back. Neither of them spoke. 

Neither of them had to. 

_ Someone _ was speaking though - and not in any Goblin tongue. In what Dean would later characterize as a fit of madness, they both took off up the slope. In running past, they glanced into one or two of the holes.

Dean wasn’t completely sure what he saw in them, as he passed, but he was pretty sure he didn’t like it. He didn’t slow down enough to get a better look. As they approached the top, the voice rang out clearer. Whoever it was, he sounded human, but that made less and less sense the more Dean considered it.

_ “...And have I not delivered?”  _ The voice rang out, clear and poisonous.   

From somewhere beyond it, a chorus of snarls, like monstrous cheering. Dean crept through the opening first, but Sam was right behind him.

_ “I know that you’re all impatient,”  _ said the voice, to what sounded like quiet approval and chittering agreement,  _ “And I know it is not in your natures to have faith, but I can assure you our time has almost come. My glory, and your freedom, will be restored!” _

The moment that Dean realized where he was, he dropped to the ground. A narrow ledge looked out over a chamber a little more cramped than the one they’d just left, but just as tall. Sam followed suit and crawled on his belly to the edge.

The audience consisted of more of Goblins than either of them would ever have imaged even existed. The entire floor-level was flush with them, crowded in and jostling from wall to wall, many of them standing anywhere from ankle to knee deep in that black water. No one even  _ considered _ looking up that high -- the entire throng was fixated.

Midway down the wall, on a wide flat ledge like a stage, stood a man, sandy-haired and without a horn in sight, with all the easy confidence of a performer with an audience in the palm of his hand.

Dean turned to confer silently with Sam.

_ Well?  _ Dean mouthed, nudging Sam. 

Sam’s eyes were huge circles, and his breathing was fast. He must have gotten some idea of what was going on, at least more than Dean did. When he finally turned, he mouthed something Dean couldn’t catch, and then, realizing the confusion, mouthed  _ tell you later.  _ He pointed discreetly to the right, where the curve of the wall dipped away from the center of the room, a direction that was at least moderately likely to keep them out of the line of sight of both the crowd and the speaker. 

The only problem was the gap. The wall swooped back in again, but there was no path along the sharpest part of the turn - nothing to sidle across or climb through. There was no choice but to jump. 

After a brief, silent argument, it was agreed upon that Dean would make the leap first. 

In a breath, Dean made his peace. He accepted the reality: the second that stone had shifted back in the (human) mine, the second he’d fallen down into this place, that was when his fate, whatever it would be, was sealed. This jump, he told himself, meant nothing - just another step on a path he had no choice but to tread. 

It might have all been bullshit, but it made him feel a little less miserable as he coiled up for the jump and sailed through the air. 

When he scrabbled onto the rock at the other side and pressed himself against the ground there, he let out a breath he’d never realized he was holding. 

He’d made it, and even better, there was a long, narrow corridor that led onward and, more importantly,  _ upward _ \-- not one of those dirty holes, but a path that Dean’s gut told him was a step closer to the surface. 

Now for Sam. 

_ “...And we’re almost ready for the first step. Before the next full moon, we will take back what belongs to me, and I will set you free upon the land!”  _ The sandy-haired man said, to great applause. 

What?

Sam froze. 

Dean froze. 

_ JUMP,  _ Dean mouthed urgently. 

Sam nodded, but his face was heavy with concern. At about age fifteen, Sam had shot up, much taller than Dean, and stayed that way ever since. Mining work had given him a decent set of muscles, but Dean was always the more coordinated and agile of the two of them. Sam had never really developed that same confidence in his own body. 

Time slowed. He watched Sam close his eyes and take a long, deep breath, before bracing himself and tensing. 

Just as he went to leap, that goddamned fucking horn blasted again. A mighty honk, like a million-pound goose, Dean thought wildy, like a goose the size of the whole fucking mountain, deep and long and shitty.

Sam lost his footing, but had already committed to the jump and followed through anyway. Below, the Goblins began to scatter.

Sam hollered some abortive version of Dean’s name and splayed his arms out, and for a moment Dean remembered what he looked like as a baby, reaching out for Dean’s hands.

Dean swung for his arm.

Their fingers brushed.

Sam slipped away.

The Goblins swarmed, insectlike, but before they could so much as pluck a hair from his head, the sandy-haired man stayed them with a single word. 

Dean could hardly hear what was said next, the screaming in his head overshadowed every sound, but one word stuck:

_ Prisoner.  _

A huge part of him wanted to fight, to swing madly until he was killed. A part of him that was stronger still processed that word, knew what it meant, clung to the possibility that if he got out, he could come back for Sam. 

As much as it pained him, Dean fled. 

  
  
  


* * *

 

 

Castiel hardly got through the doorway - he was still blinking when Hannah flew into his arms. There was no need to have full use of his vision to know his twin sister. If he was blind and deaf, he'd still know her weight and her smell.

"You found me," She murmured, burying her face in his shoulder. "You found me, you  _ saw _ me, I can't believe it, finally."

Castiel didn't say anything. He didn't even move, too scared to find out he was dreaming again -- this was almost the same as plenty of the dreams he'd had in the past ten years, especially around their birthday, and if it was a dream, he wanted to hold onto it for as long as he could. 

He was almost sure he'd even seen this space before, in dreams: an airy loft, with a ring of narrow windows stretching to the distant ceiling. As his eyes traced those lines upward, he tilted his head back and saw the bronze parabola of the enormous bell above their heads. 

Turnip glided down, circling the bell until she could land on Castiel’s shoulder. 

Why had he never heard of a belltower in the castle?

"Hannah--"

She pulled away. Her brows lowered and her eyes narrowed, a face full of gentle curiosity. “Can you see the thread?”

What? Castiel opened his mouth to begin again, but he just pressed his hands into her shoulders instead of speaking. Finally, he managed, "I have so many questions."

“I did?" Hannah responded, bafflingly. She looked in a different direction, not to where he was standing. “Oh, I think I’m losing you.” 

Castiel’s face twisted. Could she see him at all? Was she here, or was this some kind of… projection, like a ghostly record?

“I’ve been working on it for ten years, I think,” Hannah said. 

“I’m here,” Castiel reminded. “I’m here, right now.”

Finally, her eyes met his again. “You found me. No, I already… I know. At least, I think I know. I’m sorry. I think I’m… I think I have a hold of it now. But I don't know how much time I have. We have to stay focused. I have to show you something."

Hannah stepped out of his touch, and walked, in that deliberate way of hers that Castiel had thought he’d never see again. She moved to the center of the space and rested one hand on a beechwood spinning wheel. "I've made this for you."

"There is no need to--"

"Castiel, listen. Things are worse than you think. From where I am, I can see... things. It's hard to explain. I'm here and not here at the same time. I'm then, and I'm now. Time is... not what I thought it was."

"Hannah?"

"Can you see the thread?"

Castiel looked at the spinning wheel. The spool seemed to be empty, but as he moved in a wide circle around the wheel, he saw something - a glint, a glitter, like a line of spider silk. It could not be seen except for its golden shine. "I'm... not sure," he admitted. 

"I've been working on it for ten years, I think," Hannah said. "This place is... Castiel, listen. Things are worse than you think. From where I am, I can see... things. It's hard to explain."

"You said that already," Castiel interrupted. He realized with a strange shudder that the golden sparkles were  _ everywhere  _ around him, like dust in the air. When he moved his head just so, he could see each shine-spot move along its own length of what must be the thread. He had to be walking through it with each step he'd taken, touching it right now, _ breathing  _ it -- by all evidence, it seemed to fill the room completely, despite not being there at all. 

"I did?" Frustration twisted in her face. "Oh. I think I'm losing you."

"You can't lose me," Castiel spoke softly. 

"I know," Hannah nodded. "Here--" She reached into a pocket that Castiel didn't know was in the folds of her dress. Instead of walking, this time, she took half a step toward the spinning wheel, but just vanished (stopping his heart for a moment) and reappeared next to it.

Castiel followed the movement of her pale fingers as she plucked something he couldn't see from the spool and seemed to tie it around the band of a slim silver ring with a sky-blue cabochon at the top.  

He tensed into motion and shuffled toward her. The moment he was in range, she grasped his hand and slid the ring onto his index finger. 

"There's danger on the road in front of you, brother," Hannah said, looking in a completely different direction to where Castiel stood. "I'll stay with you as best as I can, but..." 

"Hannah--"

She found him, and their gazes snapped as naturally into place as if she’d been by his side all along, as if she’d never left him. "Follow the thread."

 


	3. Prevailing Winds

When Castiel opened his eyes, the bathwater was cold. 

“No,” he muttered to himself. “No, no no no, it can’t be a dream, it was  _ real,  _ it was real, I swear it was re…”

Seemingly of its own accord, one arm swung up and back down again, slicing across the surface of the water with a crack and a splash that hit the windows and darkened the stone floor around the tub. The guard outside cracked the door, eyebrows up. 

“I’m fine,” Castiel growled, rougher than he should have been, especially given the circumstances that all rushed back to meet him. 

He reached for the edge of the tub to drag himself free of the water, to run to his chambers, to find the door, to climb the stairs, to prove this was all real, and his hand closed around the rounded rim with a harsh metallic  _ clack.  _

Castiel froze, and turned his head slowly toward his left hand, though he already knew what he was going to see: a silver band encircling his index finger, with a pale blue cabochon set into the top of it. Just barely visible in the light that came in through the diaphanous curtains, there was a tiny glint of gold in the air, as if someone had dropped a single blonde hair through a column of sunlight. 

He stood up, dripping cold water into the tub, and reached his right hand out in front of his left. It took a moment, but sure enough, he could feel it. Between his finger and thumb, he rolled a slender, silken thread. After a few moments it vanished entirely, even to his touch.

A little breath, almost a laugh, slipped out of him. It would be back. He knew that fact like he knew his own name. 

Pulling on his clothes for the  _ second _ time, he picked up speed with each layer. By the time he was dressed, he was already stumbling into a stocking-footed run down the corridor and up the stairs. He was breathing hard when he burst through the door to his room. Turnip startled from her sunlit nap, and watched critically as Castiel used one forceful motion to rip the tapestry down off the wall, and sure enough: there it was. 

The feather, etched lightly into the wide wood panel. 

He held his breath and pressed one hand against it, but nothing happened. With one finger, he traced the lines of the symbol, but no light coursed through it. All at once, an angry panic swept through him and his tactic shifted rapidly to the outside of a balled up fist, slammed against the feather. There was no response, but the sound was so deeply hollow as to be drumlike. He repeated the movement, just to hear it again. 

Turnip rattled and clicked in her throat. A note of concern came through.

The wood didn’t seem that thick. He hit it again, with his shoulder this time. It gave a little, but nowhere near enough. There was probably an axe in the lower bailey, where they chopped firewood, he’d just have to--

“What are you doing?” Naomi asked from the arched doorway to his chamber. Her tone was inscrutable - it was impossible to tell if she was concerned, scolding, or something completely else. 

Naomi and Turnip had never really gotten on, and as soon as the former hoved into view, the latter took off through the open window and quickly became a little scribble against the sky.

Castiel whirled around. “She’s here. Hannah. I saw her, in the… the belltower. She--”

“Belltower?--oh,” Naomi’s face fell. “You had a dream.”

“No, no, before… when she showed me...  _ that _ was a dream, but--look,” Castiel held up his hand. He was struggling to explain, so he went with what was most compelling. “If I was dreaming, how could she have given me this?”

Naomi focused on the ring. Castiel could have sworn she blanched for just a moment, but it could have been a trick of the light. “Given you what?”

“The… this.” He pointed with his other hand.

She approached him cautiously, the way one might a madman, and Castiel was insulted before she even opened her mouth. “Castiel, you’ve had that ring for… years, at least. Are you… feeling alright?”

“It  _ wasn’t _ a dream,” Castiel insisted. “I’ve dreamed of Hannah a thousand times, this was no dream. A vision, then, or, no, a… a projection. You taught me, the old Thaumaturges would walk free of their bodies, and what happened to them _ there  _ could sometimes carry over in the ordinary world.”

Naomi sighed. “I also taught you that that kind of magic is  _ gone _ . Michael himself declared it so - he’s always been the strongest among us. If anyone would know, it would be him, and he’s quite firm that what we possess, what gives us our long lives, is merely the lingering remnants.” Her hands worried at one another as she paced. “Besides lacking the power, you’d also have to have practiced the technique. Even the very powerful usually needed another projection to draw them out and guide them at first.”

“Or, a spirit,” Castiel said, his implication clear. 

“Castiel--” Naomi’s voice was impatient.

He cut her off. “No, listen. The things  _ between _ meet the living from time to time, even the powerless have met them.” He knew he was beginning to rant, but he couldn’t help himself. “There are... recorded incidents. Remember the moneylender, who changed his ways overnight, claiming to have seen spirits? Often, they’re even left with some token to prove that it had really occurred, just as I was. Couldn’t something that already dwelled on that plane--”

“For the last time, our kind _do not_ _have souls_!” She shouted over him, red-faced, one hand balled into a fist. “It’s impossible! Castiel, you _have_ to let this go. You’re living in some kind of deranged fantasy, and _it has to stop._ ”

Castiel pursed his lips and looked away. This was one of those situations, like being called on  argumentativeness, to which there was no winning answer. He wondered why, though. Even if it was a deranged fantasy,  _ why _ did he need to stop? Their entire kingdom -- what was left it, anyway -- seemed to be simply floating purposelessly in a holding pattern. What did his mental state even matter, ultimately?

She took two more steps, until she was in arm’s reach of him and could lay one hand on his sleeve. “I’m sorry. I do not wish to be cruel, Castiel, but sensible. I merely ask the same of you.”

He backed away from her touch, frowning at where her hand had been. “What did you come for, anyway?”

“The memorial,” she said, gathering herself into the portrait of businesslike calm that was her refuge, and in the span of a moment, she looked as if the entire distressing moment had never occurred at all.

It was a successful gambit: Castiel no longer wanted to bring up the matter again, even to draw her attention to the feather etched on the wall. Her demeanor was anesthetic, and he grew numb as she walked him through the procedure for the following day’s ceremonies. This would be far from Castiel’s first military memorial, but these things were uncommon in peacetime, and his role would be different, given the circumstances. 

“They’ll want a better story, of course,” Naomi explained as they walked. She talked out the side of her mouth when she said, “I imagine you might as well.”

“We’re... lying to the families of the dead?” Castiel said, distantly, even to himself. 

“Not lying, not exactly,” she excused. “Just improving the story. The deceased will appear valorous, and the crown prince heroic, rather than incompetent and impetuous, respectively.”

“Heroic?”

“You dashed out upon hearing the story of the daughter of a servant, who ran into the woods. Of course, you were accompanied by some of your bravest guards, who volunteered the moment you told them where you were going. You saved the child, but were set upon by a  _ horde  _ of Goblins, and they bravely sacrificed themselves to allow you and the child to escape.”

“Is there any child?” Castiel asked. “Surely there will be questions--”

“She was so shaken,” Naomi explained, “she could not be expected to attend the ceremony. Besides, she was only…” Naomi paused to consider, before settling on the answer. “Six.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


It was all bullshit. 

Dean couldn’t even get a bead on what he was feeling, his emotions were batting him around like a cat with prey. Bewilderment caught him and swatted him over to rage, which shook him back and forth before letting guilt get its claws into him once more. 

Even envy had its turn with him, before the end -- in his own weird way, he was jealous of Lorraine, of Asa’s friends and extended family, and the families and friends and acquaintances of the others who all cried and held one another all around him. Objectively speaking, the ceremony was beautiful, the room was awe-inspiring, and the choir gave everyone goosebumps. 

What Dean envied was the fact that they all believed it. Maybe they all just  _ wanted  _ to believe it, so they did, maybe they let it overwrite every rumor and story they’d heard because it was the best version of things. Certainly, it all added up -- there weren’t any glaring holes in the story, to an outside observer. 

It must have been nice to buy it. It would be comforting. Dean circled back around to anger again. If Sam were here, he imagined the whole conversation they’d have just in sidelong glances.

Sam wasn’t here, because of him. 

Dean had  _ desperately  _ wanted to skip the whole mess, but now he was glad he didn’t, since all this frustration and anger with the treacherous, lying royal family was really giving him a break from the self-loathing he’d been carrying around since Sam…

He couldn’t finish the sentence, even in his own head. 

When Dean and Cas -- His Royal Highness Crown Prince Castiel, Dean corrected himself -- initially met, Dean had thought he was an alright guy. Knife to his throat, he’d never have imagined he’d be capable of this kind of deception. Standing dressed in his best ceremonial garb before everyone, the guy lied like a rug, like he was born to do it, and something about that churned especially acidically in Dean’s gut. 

_ He wasn’t born at all,  _ Dean reminded himself. He was a Thaumaturge. You never knew with them, did you? 

Couldn’t trust them. Everyone said so, everyone said it was for the best they were almost extinct, and Dean just hadn’t cared enough to listen. 

_ HRH Prince Castiel _ didn’t make eye contact for the whole speech, the whole bullshit story. Dean watched his gaze sweep just above the heads of the crowd, evenly and smoothly as if he didn’t even recognize Dean at all. 

Maybe he didn’t, Dean considered, a cold steel ball settling into his stomach. 

Still, Dean had to try. He had to do  _ something.   _

If Sam was here, he’d know, Dean imagined: he’d say  _ that one, Dean, that’s the one you pass the message to to get a foot in the door, because blah blah blah.  _ Instead, he tried to logic his way through it: the soldiers must know. A formation stood at the front of the room in the apse, and men and women in the same uniform flanked every alcove at the sides. At least some of them  _ had  _ to know the real story, whatever it was, there had to be some… some comrades-in-arms situation, and maybe they’d be sympathetic to Dean’s cause. 

Once the ceremony was over and the viewing-slash-solemn-reception had begun, he tried his luck with one. 

The first one ignored him completely, and so did the second. Not helping, but not throwing him out either. The third, though...

Dean saw her eyebrows go up ever so slightly as he approached, and he was almost sure he recognized her from the gatehouse at the end of the bridge. She’d been there that same morning that he’d escorted Castiel back to the castle -- her hair, blazing red beneath her helmet, had caught his attention briefly in the morning light that day.

He muttered to her, “I need to talk to the prince.”

Dean pressed a small roll of parchment into her hands as discreetly as he could. She almost fumbled it, but she recovered, and made a quick signal to a roaming guard to take her place as she stepped out of the line. 

There was a lot to hope for: that the small bribe or the note or both would be enough to sway his chosen soldier, and that she would have enough influence to get him an audience. The odds weren’t great, but it was Dean’s last, best hope, and he had to try. 

He returned to the crowd and waited, the spring inside him tightening further with each quiet minute. Surely he’d be thrown out for that note, and that wouldn’t be so bad -- at least then he could stop waiting for something to happen. When someone tapped him on the shoulder and murmured in his ear, he tried and failed not to be surprised. With perfect discretion, the redheaded guard led him into a dim corridor adjacent to the hall.

“Are you crazy?” She hissed, suddenly human in posture and demeanor. 

“Are you?” Dean stage-whispered back. “How come you’re not, you know…” Dean stood up straight and did a little salute. 

“Who cares about me?” She took off her helmet. “I could show this letter to General Anna and she’d have you _ killed  _ right here. What kind of  _ moron  _ just advertises ‘hi, I’m a loose end, tie me up?’”

Dean had no good answer to that. “Well are you gonna kill me, or are you gonna help me?”

She pressed her lips together for a moment. “I’m gonna help you, but I’m almost sure I’ll regret it.”

“Alright, now we’re talking!” Dean extended a dirty hand. “Dean Winchester, pleasure doing treason with you.”

The soldier shook it, rather more aggressively than he was accustomed to women shaking his hand. “Charlie.”

“Would it be pressing my luck to ask why you’re helping me?” He dared to ask.

“It would.”

“Then I won’t.”

“Follow me, and keep your mouth shut.” She put her helmet back on and led him through the hallway. 

Dean couldn’t help but look around as they walked, especially since they weren’t talking. The corridor was wide and tall, with dramatically vaulted ceilings. The stone only extended up to about hip-height -- above that, it had been covered with some kind of plaster, and then with murals that must not have been maintained in ages, since their paint cracked and peeled away from the walls. 

Belatedly, he realized that he should have been counting the doorways they passed, but by that time he was already being led into one.

The room was small, for a castle room at least, and quiet. It smelled of old paper, and for good reason: it was clearly a library, or at least some kind of study. Ancient books didn’t only line the walls on dusty shelves, they were also piled on tables, chairs, and on the floor, with no real sense of order or organization. 

“Stay here,” Charlie directed, and then she vanished to the other side of the door. 

Dean couldn’t be sure how long he waited. He had no timepiece, and there wasn’t one on the walls or anywhere he could see in the room. Really, who  _ wouldn't  _ get impatient and start touching things?

He started small, by tracing the spine of a book on one of the shelves. He wondered if it was leather. It had to be, right? It was soft and pliable under his fingertip, and a layer of powdery dust came off on his skin. 

Given a little more time, he slid the very same book from the shelf with a soft  _ shhk _ . Between the books and the upholstery, every noise seemed utterly consumed. It was the opposite to the open woods and echoing caverns Dean was used to, almost smothering.

He opened the book. 

Sam was always the bigger reader of the two of them, but once Bobby’d taken over their upbringing, he’d been pretty insistent that Dean learn how to do it too, for one reason or another.  _ Might come in handy,  _ he always said,  _ and it certainly won’t hurt.  _ Still, Dean was slower than Sam, he had to spend more time digesting the words, and it didn’t come up very often. He didn’t get a lot of practice. 

He was still frowning at the first page when he did something for which he’d later scold himself: he completely missed the soft twin sounds of the door opening and closing again. 

That meant that when he turned back toward it just by chance, he was taken completely by surprise. 

There he was, and there they were. Cas’ hair was rumpled, like it had just had a hand run through it, not entirely unlike the night they’d met. Everything else, however, was entirely different. 

“Ca--” Dean managed to stop himself as he jumped and snapped the book shut. He gave a bow that was probably all wrong, but the intent was there. “Your highness.”

He wasn’t clad in a dirty, overlarge cloak the color of stale bannocks anymore -- instead, every layer of jackets and breeches was the same matching indigo wool, with four columns of silvery buttons, so many that it made Dean’s fingers hurt just to look at them. The buttons, of course, matched the epaulets and the sash and most of the other accents, right down to the hilt of the ceremonial sword. It was a simple ensemble, fitting for a funeral, but tidy and perfect.

The prince was clean now and standing before Dean like he had an iron rod in place of a spine and a stone carving where his face should be, except for the unreadable fire somewhere behind his eyes. Utterly inhuman - and maybe that was the real truth, Dean considered -- but still utterly (and unfairly) heart-stopping.

“Hello, Dean” Castiel addressed cautiously, but said nothing after that. 

In that moment, everything collapsed into place, and Dean remembered himself. He laid the book in his hands on the closest stack and drew the anger from before back up into his throat. “Hello, yourself.”

In return, he was met with nothing more than a gentle tilt of Castiel’s head and a subtle furrowing of his brow. 

Dean shook his head and huffed. “Right. You’re just gonna stand there and pretend like you don’t… Screw you, you know that? Did you think no one would know you were talking out your ass?”

“Excuse me?” Castiel was clearly affronted, and that fact itself found Dean a little satisfied. 

“Did you think everyone would buy your shit, or did you just depend on them all being polite enough, or maybe  _ scared enough _ not to say anything about it?” Dean demanded.

“I did what I had to--”

“You’re the damn pr… Listen, everybody knows Michael’s not even in the building. So don’t feed me that horseshit. Who gives  _ you _ orders?” A little voice in Dean’s head his head went  _ no no you’re supposed to be asking him for help what are you doing _ but that logic was no match for the self-righteousness that boiled over inside and rose from him like steam.

Castiel looked at the floor. “You aren’t wrong, Dean, but there are bigger concerns than yours and mine. I know that in your... simple understanding of things, I have some rank and power that allows me to do as I please, but things are--”

“You know what, nevermind.” Dean interrupted again. “I should have known you freaks would defend each other. You had me fooled, back there in the woods. I thought you were… I don’t know, not a human exactly, but close enough to one, you know? I actually thought that maybe, just maybe, if everybody up here was like you, maybe you all gave a damn about the rest of us, at least enough to not lie to our faces when you let our brothers d--”

The word caught in Dean’s throat and his face went hot. He wasn’t about to let himself cry like a child in front of the damn prince, but it was going to be a near thing. He struggled to get a hold on himself.

“Wait,” Castiel held up a halting hand. “Dean, did something happen? Something else, other than...”

“The hell do you care?” Dean shouted now, he didn’t care anymore who heard him, if ever he did. Castiel was giving him a down-ramp but he wasn’t taking it. 

Castiel’s answer was a long, exhausted sigh. He did something a bit strange, just then, that  _ almost  _ escaped Dean’s notice. The prince’s left hand drifted over his right, and his left index finger twirled gently at something just in front of the right one, as if he was playing with a strand of something, but nothing was there. 

“What was I to do?” Castiel said, voice firm and low. “Tell them the truth? Do you really think that would be better? That they’d feel better, now? I lied  _ because  _ I care, Dean. I didn’t like it at first either, but then I thought about the people I met that night, how they’d feel... I thought of  _ you. _ ”

“Sure, sure,” Dean said, muscling in as much sarcasm as his words could hold, “And I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that it makes you look good?”

Rather than say anything, Castiel just hardened his eyes and tensed his jaw. His inability to answer gave Dean a hollow pleasure that he wasn’t sure he had any right to feel, and that cold expression (like a different man altogether than the one he’d met before) made it so much easier for Dean to convince himself he was strong and right. 

“Why are you  _ here, _ Dean? I was told me you were in distress, in need, and if I am honest, I wanted that chance to return your kindness. Now it seems you simply deceived my guard for the chance to… vent your spleen.” Castiel turned to leave. 

“Hey!” It was an out of body experience. Dean watched himself reach forward, hook one hand on Castiel’s epaulette, and yank him back around. Yes, he did just do that, he told himself, so there was no going back now. “I didn’t lie. I do… need help.”

The squint on Castiel’s face was as confused as it was offended. “And you thought  _ this  _ was the way to gain my favor, to get me to listen?”

“No, that was just… look,” Dean huffed a little laugh, “I’ve never been much good at the honey-not-vinegar thing, okay? I think… maybe it’s not just me. We’re _ all  _ about to need help, if I’ve got things right. So, please, let’s just… start this over again?”

“Very well,” Castiel said, looking like it was against his better judgment.

Dean forced himself to recount the whole terrible story of their trip through the Goblins’ home, such as it was. He wasn’t sure if Cas or anyone else was going to care about Sam, but he was almost sure he could pique interest with information about the new-and-improved Goblins and their strange leader. 

He was right, too -- the moment he got to the part with the sandy-haired man, he saw Cas blanch with barely-concealed shock, even  _ fear _ . In that moment, he could have sworn he  _ had  _ him, like a fish on a line.

That was why it was such a jolt when Castiel looked somewhere to Dean’s left and said, evenly and neutrally, “I’m sorry Dean, I wish there was more I could do” and swept out of the room before Dean could even open his mouth to stop him.

Moments later, Dean was being escorted roughly from the castle by two guards who spoke as though he’d been found sneaking around and trespassing.

When the officers finished tossing Dean inelegantly aside, he brushed himself off and scowled back at them. One of them turned and stomped off, but the other lingered just long enough to toss a fabric-wrapped parcel at Dean’s feet. 

Inside, he found a leather scabbard attached to a belt. The blade was smallish, hardly longer than Dean’s forearm, but as he slid it from its sheath, he realized what it was: a crystal weapon, like the ones used by soldiers who fought against Goblins. Most of those were cloudy though, colored, heavily included… this one was so clear that when he held it up, he could see the deep green woods right through it. 

With it, a hastily scrawled note:

_ In the event that you elect to do something stupid, at least, be smart about it.  _


	4. Bone-Deep

Castiel’s chest hurt with the force of his heartbeat as he ran.

_ You did WHAT?  _ Anna had gotten the first (verbal) swing.  _ You’ve lost your mind,  _ Naomi had come in for the second blow. 

Castiel’s feet slammed against the ground, right after left after right, slowing only to weave through trees and brambles. 

_ You want me to send more of my men out there? No reconnaissance, nothing?  _ Anna had been clearly hurt, she couldn’t bear to lose anyone else to an enemy they’d never imagined being worse than a pest. 

They hadn’t been able to see the thread, which was frankly ridiculous, since its path had been so thick and clear in that moment, if it had been any more apparent it’d have lit up the room. Let them think what they wanted. 

Castiel was going to follow the thread. 

_ You’ll doom us all,  _ those had been Naomi’s words,  _ you’re as mad as… well... _

As every other twinned Thaumaturge left alone, she’d almost said, but that would have implicated Michael -- unacceptable. He’d tried to explain, to use reason, to say that if they told Michael, they couldn’t know how he was going to react - or overreact, as the case was likely to be. 

Castiel briefly considered suggesting a battalion going down there, trying to clear the place out. If it  _ was  _ somehow Lucifer at the helm, destroying his foot-soldiers would mean he’d be on his own by the time Michael returned. 

Once upon a time, it might have been possible, but if the Goblins _ were _ doing what Dean said they were, there was no way. From the sounds of things, they had numbers on their side,  _ and  _ could no longer be counted on to be stupid or feral. However they’d overpowered the soldiers in the woods, they’d do worse underground where they were more powerful.

They needed  _ intel _ more than anything else. There were too many unknown unknowns, and Castiel had hardly been able to think with that thread shining and tugging and demanding _.  _

_ Don’t tell Michael,  _ he’d said,  _ don’t tell him anything until we know more _ , but he knew in his heart that Naomi would never listen. She probably had a bird in flight carrying a message to Michael by the time Castiel hit the edge of the forest. 

Eventually, he had to slow down - he couldn’t get enough air to press on, and the pain in his chest and his side was overwhelming. Besides which, the brush was getting denser and harder to pick through. 

The damn thing could have at least taken him someplace a little more well-trodden.

“Hannah, if you’re listening,” he grumbled, “I sure hope this is what you had in mind.”

The path he was taking was unknown to him -- nothing was familiar. Wherever the thread led him, there must be a reason. That, or everyone was right and he’d gone mad and was headed to his own end. 

Do people who go mad know they’re going mad, he wondered, or do they just think the rest of the world is going mad around them?

There it was: a hole that led into the earth, the thread seeming to hover in the air as it wound its way through the door, glittering.

Castiel lowered himself into it, and went into a controlled skid down the slanted surface that followed. The thread led him down the right side of a branching tunnel, and he didn’t so much as consider defying it. He focused on the smooth brush of the thread against his fingers, all the while trying and failing _ not _ to think about the slowly contracting diameter of the space he was passing through. It led down at first, with the ceiling’s drop being more dramatic than the floor, until he was crawling through. 

When the corridor curved upward and revealed a jagged hole that opened to the sky again, the relief was almost overwhelming. 

This was a part of the mountain Castiel had never seen before. From the smell alone, he could tell it was higher than he’d ever been before, despite being at the bottom of a steep-walled crater. There was no vegetation around the edges - no trees, no bushes, no grass, not even the dirt to grow them. Above him, deep purple-gray clouds moved quickly across the patch of sky he could see. 

From there, the thread flickered its path up one of the walls

Dean had showed him a trick for pulling himself up onto difficult ledges, and he used it to haul himself up onto one thin ridge. Above it, the ground was loose, and he scraped his hands against the rocks and ground tiny pebbles into his skin, but he never let go of the thread and where it was leading him. 

Either he was mad, and he was going to die on the mountain (or under it, depending on how far he got) and the kingdom would be better off without him,  _ or _ he was lucid and the thread would lead him somehow to safety. 

There was no third option.

At the top of the heap, the thread led straight into the rock ahead, vanishing into a crack between one large stone and the next. Castiel shoved against it with his hands, and then his shoulder, he dug his fingers in and pulled, but it didn’t budge.

He gasped for air, having climbed until his muscles screamed - with nowhere to continue to, he was forced to grapple with his own exhaustion. 

“Damnit, Hannah,” Castiel swore, balling up one fist and bringing it down on the looser stones that seemed to consume the thread. 

He let himself sink to his knees and catch his breath once again. The mountain was dark and quiet, and he’d be afraid of what that silence meant if it weren’t for his current vantage point - it would be almost impossible for anyone or anything to sneak up on him. 

Small blessings, he supposed. 

And then, somewhere past the sound of his own heavy breaths, Castiel heard something. For a brief second he thought it might be some creature - a Goblin, even - but then the voice resolved into words. 

A song.

_ \--and all that’s dark inside us _

_ will flicker into light-- _

Dean. It was unmistakable, he was singing that same song as before, somewhere beyond the stones. 

Castiel pressed his mouth against the rock. 

“Dean!” He shouted against the stone. “Dean, can you hear me?!”

The singing stopped, and then after a brief pause, Dean’s voice called back, distant and hoarse, but audible nevertheless: “Cas!?”

“I’m here!” Castiel called, lips pressed against the rocks.

“How the  _ hell _ did you find me?”

He had no answer that made sense, so he just went with the truth. “I followed the thread!”

The thread had been right thus far, but just like it had led him through dense brambles, Castiel was concerned that it didn’t understand that he couldn’t pass through stone. He didn’t know what magic governed it - it was made by a spirit, or something similar, maybe it didn’t know he couldn’t move like one.

On the other side, he heard a  _ plink _ of rock on rock. Castiel pressed his ear against the stone for a moment and heard a scraping and clattering that grew closer, rising up from the depths. 

Dean was  _ climbing.  _

Castiel ignored the large boulder that pinched at the thread, focusing instead on the smaller pieces around it. He started by brushing aside clumps of loose pebbles, and then picking up rocks the size of his fist or his head and tossing them down into the crater where he’d come from. 

He worked at it like it was a puzzle, or a maze, tracing what stone supported the next and freeing them one by one. 

“Cas?” Dean’s voice was much closer now - he had to be right on the other side. By the time he’d made it to the top of whatever cavern he was apparently trapped in, Castiel had made a messy pile at the bottom of the crater and the area around the big blocked stone looked almost tidy, a door in a doorway.

“Dean, there’s a big, flat rock in front of you, right? The one you’re… hearing me through. Can you push it?”

“I already did that,” Dean griped. “Practically the first thing I did when I got trapped in here.”

“Trust me,” Castiel growled, bracing himself in preparation to pull again. “You’re not working alone now. I think it’ll shift.”

Dean murmured something like _ well, alright,  _ and then counted down. 

On their first attempt, the rock moved, just a little, maybe a few inches, but that was all Castiel needed to buoy his spirits for another try, and from the just-short-of-wild laugh he heard, Dean must have been feeling the same. 

“One more time,” Castiel demanded. 

“Cas, it isn’t gonna--”

“One more time.”

“Fine.”

“Three. Two. One--”

Castiel dug his fingers into the crevice and pulled. From the other side, he could feel the pressure of Dean’s push. He had no idea how whether Dean had much or any traction, or how big the ledge he was on might be -- he could be pulling his punches to avoid falling. How far did he have to fall? 

There was another little budge, and a moment later, a rough vibration and slide. 

The slab that had been between them fell outward, and Castiel just barely evaded it to one side. The bottom of it skidded outward, surreally like a sled on the snow as it slipped down the steep set of rocks and outcroppings into the crater. It hit the bottom with a tremendous crash and cracked in two.

Castiel looked up, and there was Dean, artfully flushed, breathing heavily with exertion, and clinging to the edge of the newly-formed opening in the mountain. Despite the chill of the night, sweat stood out around his hairline and the darkness blew his pupils wide open.

Dean seemed to realize at roughly the same moment as Castiel that they’d been just looking at one another for a beat too long.

“Boy am I glad to see you,” Dean said, coughing. “Sam’s down there too, but his arm’s busted and he’s a little out of it, help me pull him up and whatever you did to find us, we’ll do it in reverse and get the hell outta here, sound good?”

Castiel’s attention fell on the thread, glittering even in the low light, and he held it loosely in one hand. The path it traced didn’t go backward. For a moment, he started to turn, as if he could direct the thread rather than the other way round, but as soon as he faced back the way he came, the damn thing vanished altogether. 

He turned toward the opening -- through it, he could see Sam sitting against the cavern wall, head bent forward, one arm cradling the other -- and the thread appeared in his hand once more. It led down into the cavern, right past Sam’s crumpled form, and through a boulder that blocked the exit. 

“What are you waiting for?” Dean demanded. 

“We aren’t going that way,” Castiel said, even and quiet, eyes fixed on the path of the thread. “I don’t think it’s possible, anyway.”

“The hell you talking about?” Dean’s eyebrows dipped into a line of confused anger. “We have to get Sam out of here, I’m not taking him back into that.”

“I don’t think we have a choice.” Castiel lowered himself backwards down over the ledge and into the cavern as if he were going down a very strange, uneven ladder with slime-covered rungs. As he knelt down next to Sam, he heard the sounds of Dean following after him. 

Sam looked up and startled, as if he’d been half-asleep until just then. 

“Your highne--uh--” Sam looked from Castiel’s hand to his face and back again. 

“We’re a little past formalities, I think,” Castiel confided. “Can you stand?”

Sam clasped his good hand in Castiel’s and let himself be drawn to his feet.

“The thread leads this way,” Castiel indicated to the boulder that blocked the path. 

“Alright,” Dean interrupted. “I’ve had just about enough of this thread crap. You sound nuts, and if you’re trying to take my _ injured brother _ back into enemy territory, you must  _ be  _ nuts.”

“How do you think I found you here?” Castiel’s voice was stern, and he narrowed his eyes at Dean. “Do you think a little  _ Goblin _ told me?”

“I don’t know, did he?” Dean challenged. “Maybe that’s what’s really going on here. Your  _ magic  _ comes from the same place they came from, right? Who says you’re not a little cozier than you all let on? Maybe that’s why you people don’t  _ do anything _ about the Goblins. And that guy in charge of them, he was one of you... right Sam?”

Castiel’s jaw worked as he sought patience, but the last few words stopped his thoughts in their tracks. He glanced back and forth, from Sam to Dean and back. 

Sam swallowed. He spoke gently, like someone trying to soothe a wild horse to rope it. “I uh… yeah, I think he was a Thaumaturge.”

“How could you tell?” Castiel felt panic flutter in his chest. “There isn’t any magic left. Michael  _ said  _ there wasn’t any magic left.”

“I don’t know,” Sam just shrugged and shook his head. “That’s what the books say too, but I know what I saw. He’s got power. A lot of it. He just…” Sam mimed a snap with his good hand.

Dean finished for him: “He’s got all the Goblins working for him, and if they step outta line, they get vaporized. If he  _ does _ like ‘em, he juices them up real good. Makes them smarter, stronger. He’s even changing how they look.”

“He’s Lucifer, isn’t he?” Sam said, a fear in his eyes that seemed to  _ beg _ Castiel to deny it, to say it was all some kind of misunderstanding. 

He couldn’t do that, though. “I’ve never met Lucifer,” Castiel hedged, “His story was over long before I was made, or so I was told, but…” But this was everything Michael had feared, everything they’d all feared. “The evidence does seem to point in that direction.”

The thread flickered brightly in the cavern, though Castiel was the only one who could see it. Did it have a mind, or an intention? Was it trying to regain his focus?

He approached the boulder and gave it a hard shove. “The thread says this way,” he explained, watching Sam and Dean exchange a  _ look _ . He knew what that probably meant, but ignored it. “I’m  _ not _ in league with him, or them. Now, are you prepared to move on?”

“Castiel…” Sam began, voice full of trepidation, “I don’t mean anything by this question, okay? I really just want to understand. What thread?”

“What he said,” Dean said, a little less softly.

Castiel sighed. “My sister -- my  _ twin  _ sister -- gave it to me. She said that if there was trouble, I should follow it. This all… counts as trouble. Wouldn’t you say?”

“Your dead sister, you mean,” Dean said without the slightest sensitivity. 

“Yes,” Castiel grew impatient. “Now, can you help me push this out of the way?”

After another one of their shared glances, Sam braced his good shoulder against the boulder and dug his heels into the ground. Dean had to roll his eyes a little for good measure, as if to prove he was just doing this for a lark and didn’t take it seriously at all, but prepared to push. 

Castiel counted down once more. 

He’d only gotten to two when the boulder rolled away of its own accord. 

Sam stumbled, and his bad arm came out automatically. Dean pulled himself out of his own reel quick enough to catch Sam before he went down, and they steadied one another. Castiel, who’d already started putting more weight against the stone, was left to fend for himself and went down completely. 

When he looked up from where he’d fallen on his hands and knees. A broad, tanned hand -- not in the least Goblinish -- was proffered before him. Castiel’s eyes followed the line of the arm up to a blue-eyed face that wore the  _ least _ reassuring smile Castiel had ever seen. 

“Hello, brother,” he said, in a voice as soft and slippery as butchered viscera. “Let me help you.”

Dean stepped in front of Sam. It wouldn’t do much good, but Castiel recognized the instinct. For the moment, Lucifer’s attention seemed to be on Castiel, and Castiel wanted to keep it that way. He caught Dean dipping one hand into the layers of his clothes - reaching, Castiel hoped, for the knife he’d passed along. 

He set his gaze on Lucifer’s hand, about as willing to touch it as if it were a rotting animal, and he pulled himself slowly and deliberately to his feet without aid. 

In his peripheral vision, Dean exhaled for the first time since Lucifer appeared. 

“Fine, fine, be that way,” Lucifer shrugged off the snub. “But you know, I’m glad you’re here. It’s really spectacular timing.”

Castiel squared his shoulders. “Dare I ask what you mean?” Behind his back he gestured for Sam and Dean to start toward the hole that Castiel had come in through. 

Lucifer rolled his eyes, raised one arm, and snapped, collapsing the entire section of wall. There was no way in or out, except past him.

“Well, I didn’t know they belonged to  _ you. _ ” Lucifer gestured loosely at Sam and Dean. “I picked them up sneaking around here, figured they’d make decent chew toys for my pets -- they’re getting impatient, and having some ‘ _ sun people’  _ to play with? Well that would do wonders for morale--”

“You were going to… what, kill them? Torture them?” Castiel felt himself wince through his frown.

“Not  _ me _ , per se, and certainly the second one first. Wouldn’t be any fun the other way around,” Lucifer detailed. “Anyway, I’m willing to reconsider -- I figure ripping up your little dollies probably wouldn’t be good for our alliance.”

“We have  _ no alliance. _ ” 

“What can I say, I’m thinking ahead! And I know something you don’t know -- a lot of somethings, in fact -- that I think  _ might _ change your mind.” Lucifer tapped his fingers together: pinky to pinky, ring to ring, middle to middle, index to index, thumb to thumb. The way his face moved, the way he gestured, it all seemed so exaggerated as to be dreamlike. 

“Let them go,” Castiel re-focused the issue. “Give them safe passage back. It’s clearly me you want.”

“Castiel, Castiel, Castiel. So single-minded. Listen, they’re no sweat off my nose. Heck, I’ll do you one better. You’re gonna like this, it’s a  _ killer  _ deal. Give me oh… say… about ten minutes of your time, hear me out, and all three of you get to walk right out the front door.”

“Why?” Castiel frowned. “You know that Michael will be alerted immediately, why would you let me go?”

“Let’s just say I’m pretty confident you’re not going want to do that. Oh, and there’s one  _ little _ caveat.”

“Of course.”

“I’m going to give you something, Castiel, a gift, and you have to take it, willingly.”

“What do  _ you  _ consider a gift, I wonder?”

Lucifer let his arms hang loose and wiggled, a bit like a frustrated child, and his tone reflected the same. “That would ruin the surprise!” After a pause, he re-composed himself and added, “It won't hurt. At least, not very  _ much _ .”

“You must know that no matter what you say, I will never support a war on my own kingdom.”

“War?!” Lucifer didn’t only tip his head, he arched his entire back so that he could laugh mockingly with greater effect. His face was a caricature of pitying confusion. “What would I want a war for?”

“Hey!” Dean, for whatever reason, couldn’t seem to keep his mouth shut. “We were there at your little rally, me and Sam. We heard every word. You can’t lie to us.”

“Oh for the love of…” Lucifer took a steadying breath and spoke as if to a particularly frustrating child. “Even if I were to win a war -- and I would -- it would be a waste of Goblins, and frankly, of talent. If you were  _ there _ , didn’t you notice any of my uh… new and improved Goblins? Granted, I’ve got most of them on field assignments...”

“New and improved?” Sam asked warily. 

“Bright-eyed, flat-toothed, and smooth-skulled,” Lucifer beamed. “As pink and squishy as any of you lot. You’ve already met a few, I think.” He started to count on his fingers as he listed: “I’ve got guards in the castle, apothecaries in the city,  _ adorable  _ homeless orphans - those might be my favorites - oh, and my best-if-least-loyal servant, the new foreman of the country’s biggest mine! He thinks I don’t know he hates me, it’s cute.”

Dean and Sam reacted to that last thing, though Castiel wasn’t sure how to interpret their expressions. 

Lucifer pressed on: “Their numbers are growing every day, I’m getting  _ so  _ good at breeding these stupid little insects and raising them from the dirt to be something better, something useful. My spies and rabble-rousers and saboteurs… I know, I know, I’m way ahead of you, you’re thinking…” Lucifer did a gruff mockery of Castiel’s voice,  _ “You’ll never get away with this, I’ll tell Michael, I’ll stop you…” _ He returned to his ordinary lilt. “But keep your britches on, ‘cause the only reason I’m telling you this is that it’s already  _ fait accompli.  _ Sure, I’m not  _ done  _ done _ ,  _ not by a long shot, but I’m just so  _ proud _ of what I’ve already accomplished, brother. I want to show you what we’re  _ working  _ with. I don’t need a  _ war _ to take over.”

“There is no ‘we,’” Castiel declared. “You want to give me a gift, and if I say yes, all three of us have safe passage out of here?”

“Listen, I can’t make any guarantees about the you-know-whats, I control them pretty good, but they’re… y’know…” He waved one hand next to his ear, perhaps to indicate some kind of instability. “But I promise not to get in your way.”

Dean cut in, “Cas, I don’t see how we have much of a choice here, I gotta get Sam out of--”

“Castiel,” Lucifer rolled his eyes, warning in his voice. “Can you tell your dog not to bark, please?”

“Hey!” Dean shouted, though he could barely get the whole word out. With a flick of his hand, Lucifer sent Dean flying limply across the cavern. The space was narrow, so he didn’t go far, but still the noise when he hit the stone wall made Castiel cringe. 

“Adults are talking,” Lucifer scolded.

Sam reached Dean in one or two long strides, but whatever they said to one another next was too sotto-voiced to make out as Lucifer talked right over them. 

“He’s  _ fine _ . I didn’t break your toy,” Lucifer assured, “In fact, since I’m just throwing all kinds of freebies around today…” He snapped his finger again, and Castiel heard Sam gasp deeply, as if plunged into cold water. 

Castiel spun to see Sam kneeling on the ground next to Dean, stretching out his broken arm, twisting his hand, bending it, making a fist. 

“How?” Castiel turned back to Lucifer and demanded. “Michael _ himself _ declared that nearly all magic had gone from this realm. How is this possible?”

“I thought you’d  _ never _ ask,” Lucifer said, that silky, sales-y tone back in his voice. “I get it. I do -- the whole,  _ not questioning him  _ thing. I used to think he was pretty hot shit, too.”

“Get to the point.”

Lucifer did. “He also told you that Hannah was all in your head, didn’t he?”

“How could you know--”

“You may never have met  _ me _ Castiel, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been had eyes watching  _ you,”  _ There was a little venom in that, but it evaporated entirely as he went on, clapping his hands affably onto Castiel’s shoulders. “Focus on the good news! You’re not crazy! You just saw what I did with your own eyes, Castiel. It’s magic. Hannah visiting you, that’s magic too. All you have to do to make sense of it is stop believing  _ one big lie _ .” 

Castiel’s head swam and his stomach twisted. The sheer enormity of that was a wave, a storm surge, sweeping out his feet and sending his world tumbling. The best he could do was to keep his face as neutral as possible. 

Behind him, Dean muttered something to Sam, and Sam muttered back. It was unintelligible.

“You like it, don’t you?” Lucifer closed in and murmured, almost seductive, demonstrating that the best Castiel could do was still not enough to hide how he felt. “You don’t even trust me and you _ still  _ want to believe it so bad you can’t stop yourself. Save yourself the dissonance and just let yourself see reality… which is a perfect segue to my gift!”

Lucifer brought his hands together in a giddy clap, and then raised two fingers to Castiel’s forehead.

“Oh kiddos,” he called to to the two real humans in the room, “might want to cover your eyes for this bit, if you plan to keep them.”

There was a momentary struggle, palpable in the air of the room, but they obeyed just before a bright-but-brief flash. 

In the end, it  _ did _ hurt, for a moment. There was a jolt, and heat swept through his veins, but a perfect coolness followed it. Castiel’s skin twitched up into goose pimples and relaxed again. 

_ Power.  _ He could feel it, from his toes to his scalp and even in the hairs on his head, coursing like his blood, expanding and contracting like his lungs, natural and right, like a missing limb restored that he never knew he was meant to have. 

Lucifer made a noise between a giggle and a cackle. “Go ahead. Try it out. Zap one of the humans or something.”

Castiel shot a look of umbrage back at him. “I will  _ not _ .”

“Fine, suit yourself,” Lucifer shrugged animatedly, “but don’t tell me that doesn’t feel good.” His voice darkened a shade when he said, “I’ve felt it. I know. This is what Michael  _ took _ from you, brother. This is what he took from  _ all  _ of you. Think on that.”

“How?” Castiel managed to ask over the humming tingle of power in his ears that he was still adjusting to.

“Oh, that? Hardly worth mentioning,” Lucifer waved a hand in dismissal. “But if you must know…. those Goblins, they have this… instinctive  _ need _ to get back to the gate they came out of - same gate our dear old daddy pulled our magic out of. They don’t want to go home or anything, they just seem to want to be near it or something. You know how insects are with a flame. Just so happens in all that  _ digging _ , they dug  _ yours truly _ up first. Lucky for them  _ and  _ me.”

“Where is the gate?” Castiel demanded, drinking deeply of information, of finally knowing and understanding the world around him, of the feeling of things making sense, and needing still more. 

“Nowhere,” Lucifer grinned. “I helped them find it, sure, then I sucked out as much power as I could before I destroyed it. Seems like ever since then, I sort of… I don’t know,  _ smell _ like the gate or something, I have the most gate-power out of anything around these days, so they follow me around like a bunch of nasty little ducklings.”

“Cas, can we focus on getting out of here? This ain’t a family reunion,” Dean scolded. 

For a moment, Castiel considered what Lucifer had said,  _ go ahead, give it a try, zap the one of the humans or something _ … something about all that power made him feel somehow entitled to respect in a way that being a prince never had. 

No.  

No, if he was going to be in charge of a flame, he couldn’t simply burn things - he had to find a way to use it for heat and light, not start a wildfire. 

“You did promise we could leave,  _ brother,”  _ Castiel said the last word with no small amount of bitterness. 

“Sure, sure,” Lucifer nodded, and then he looked to each one of them in turn. “You uh… know the way, right? Or am I gonna have to tag along?”

Castiel clasped his hands together as a way to surreptitiously run a finger across Hannah’s thread. He said, letting just a little of his pleasure at turning Lucifer down leak through: “We know where we’re going already, thank you.”

Lucifer was already opening his mouth to speak again, but he stopped, and his face fell for just a fraction of a second. 

Interesting. He must have been certain that Castiel would say no, or perhaps say nothing at all -- he must have been confident that they’d need some kind of further guidance.

Whatever information Lucifer had, Castiel realized it must not include the thread. He worked not to show it, but somewhere between sternum and spine, there was a rush of ebullience. Castiel still had at least one secret. 

The moment Lucifer realized he was being examined, he straightened up. 

“Well then,” he said, and he was gone. No sound, no puff of smoke, just gone. 

Dean threw a rock at the empty space where Lucifer had been standing. 

“He’s really gone, Dean,” Castiel reassured himself as much as he did Dean. He took a deep breath and let it out. “He’s gone.”

“Yeah, well, can’t hurt to make sure,” Dean grumbled back. “If he’s gone, does that mean you can test out the mojo now?”

“Dean!” Sam scolded. “No! He can’t  _ use _ it, in the stories, power like that is never free. We may not see the catch yet, but there’s got to be something. Right, Cas?” 

“Sam,” Castiel addressed, voice low and edged, “Your arm was broken. Lucifer restored it for you. Are you not going to use it?”

“Well--”

“What do you imagine is the difference?” Castiel started off down the corridor, and his companions followed. 

 


	5. Star-nosed

Dean may have been a skeptic, but he wasn’t in the habit of denying reality to its face, so he had to give the “golden thread”  _ some _ credit, whether he could see it or not. The Goblins’ side of the mine was a maze, and then some, and Cas (and his thread) hadn’t led them wrong as far as he could see. Not a single dead end, and, possibly more importantly, not a single aggressive Goblin. 

On one occasion, they’d passed a whole _ row _ of Goblins, standing loosely against a wall. It had been hard to tell, but their eyes were glassy and unfocused. Some kind of trance or spell, Dean figured. Maybe it was part of Lucifer’s process. Not hostile, though.

Cas chose one of many tunnels leading off a well-lit main area, and it quickly narrowed to the point that they could pass each other, but it was awkward -- they couldn’t walk even two abreast. Cas took point. 

This made sense, so Dean allowed it, what with Cas being both the navigator and the guy with the juice. When Dean insisted on being at the back of their little line, he said it was because he had the useful knife and Sam didn’t, but the truth was he’d have done the same even if he’d been armed with nothing more than his fists. 

He wasn’t exposing Sam to any more danger.

They’d passed the point where light could reach. Dean could swear he felt his pupils expand and contract, trying to adjust and failing when they couldn’t find even the barest hint to latch onto. He put a hand on Sam’s shoulder, and from the movement beneath his palm, he felt Sam take the hint and do the same to Cas.

Dean failed to see how Cas could know where his thread was leading in this darkness, but it was magic after all, and Cas was magic, and if he was pressing on and not saying anything… well no news was good news, right?

Sam began to walk with a bit of a hunch, Dean felt it in the tension of his back, and he realized that the channel through the mountain was getting shorter as well as narrower. 

While the living quarters (such as they were) of the Goblins had smelt terrible - like rot and sickness and brackish water - many of the larger caverns, especially close to the dam, had had that almost pleasant cold mineral smell that Dean associated with certain adits. 

Down in this passage, though, the overwhelming impression of the smell was something else entirely, something  _ old.  _ Not old like old  _ people _ , or old decomposing things, it was nothing so organic. It was like oldness itself. The air was still and thick, and as Dean began to bend his own neck as well to fit into the path ahead, he began to wonder how much of that air there  _ was _ , if it was enough for three people.  

If Cas used his magic, to make light, or to defend them from something, would it burn air, the way fire did? Dean didn’t understand the rules, and that made him uneasy.

Dean’s world began to shrink until it was comprised solely of the smell, and the sound of three men walking, and the feel of Sam’s shirt beneath his hand… And the dark, that eddied around like a thick, black liquid. For a moment there was an image in his mind of the three of them surfacing onto the mountain, but still being covered in a slimy layer of darkness that wouldn’t wash off.

He focused on each thing in turn, on Cas’ breathing, and on Sam’s, and his own breaths, in and out, in and out. The walls narrowed further, and the only warning Dean got was when Cas and Sam’s footsteps fell out of rhythm as they had to adjust the way they walked. 

Dean adjusted too, so that he wasn’t walking straight forward, but more of a sideways shuffle. His hand fell from Sam’s shoulder to his elbow to accommodate the shift.

Why wasn’t anyone  _ saying _ anything? Did they know something he didn’t know? Sam knew a lot of things... about royalty, about magic, about Goblins, Dean knew how much Sammy read. Cas had some gaps in his practical knowledge, but he was a prince, he must be well educated enough. If they were both silent...

He followed suit, no matter how much better he would have felt to whistle, or crack a joke, or sing to himself. There had to be some reason, so he knit his lips together and kept quiet too. 

The sidling movement slowed them down, and Dean found himself having to duck his head farther, make himself smaller to avoid brushing or bumping into the walls. 

There was a strange coiling tension in his thighs and shoulders, like his limbs were preparing to run headlong, but there was no space for him to do so. With each abbreviated step, the coil grew tighter, and all that unspent energy turned somehow to heat. 

It had been stupid to trust the thread in the first place. What if Lucifer was controlling it? What if he knew about it all along, and was just pretending not to know so that they’d follow it to some cramped, inescapable place where no one would ever find them, even when they were just three tangled skeletons?

He began to sweat, and maybe it was the temporary blindness that made him feel it all the more richly, the salty little pinpricks of every bead of perspiration dragging through his pores. It made him damp, and the damp of his body hit the damp of the air to leave him somehow clammy on the surface of his skin despite the furnace pumping pressure into his muscles.

Cas’ shuffle-steps stopped, and a different sort of swishing and scraping began, but Dean couldn’t identify it until Sam dropped to his knees just ahead and Dean had no choice but to follow suit to fit through the next section of the tunnel. 

The ceiling was just above his head. He couldn’t see it, and he wasn’t making contact with it -- for all that his regular senses could detect it might as well be a million miles away, but it wasn’t. He could feel it somehow, even without touching him it seemed to sit upon him with the full weight of the mountain. 

The coil in his limbs moved to his chest, and twisted around his lungs. 

Breathing in, breathing out. He swallowed against the clenching of his stomach.

Cas’ breaths, Sam’s breaths, his own breaths. Cas’ footsteps -- wait. Cas was crawling on his hands and knees, they all were, and he could hear it, the light tap of hands and the rustling of fabric, but…

But the footsteps were there, too, just farther away, behind, back where they’d come from.

At first, there was only one set.  _ Ppapp-ppapp, ppapp-ppapp,  _ like a shallow heartbeat in a tray, the occasional light splash when the feet hit water. 

They got closer, and Dean would later swear that everything slowed. 

_ Ppppaa-- _

_ Ppappappappappa-- _

Not one set of footsteps, but many. 

“Sam--”

“I know,” Sam answered, and Dean heard the fear Sam was trying to hide. “I hear it.”

“Cas?” Dean asked, trying to keep the tremble out of his  _ own _ voice. “What do you think, buddy? Forward or back?”

“They’re definitely getting closer,” There was a long pause, and the sound of Cas trying to turn and finding that there wasn’t enough room. To Dean’s ears, he sounded more  _ irritated _ than anything else. “They’ll… be able to move a lot better than we can. I don’t think we can out-crawl them.”

“What are you suggesting?” Sam asked.

“Back,” Cas said.

“We’re going to  _ fight _ them?” Dean winced at how high his voice went when he asked that.

“ _ Go _ ,” Cas demanded.

Dean obeyed the urgency in that one word, he couldn’t turn around, but he crawled backward as quickly as he could, scooting on his hands and knees in a careless hurry that left him wriggling against the walls and ceiling. Sam was better at this than he was somehow, despite his size, and his feet kept hitting the tops of Dean’s fingers, leaving him feeling like a whipped cart horse.

His breaths came quick and short, little gasps that just filled the tops his lungs. It was everything he  _ knew  _ better than to do in a small space deep underground. The  _ ppappappapp _ of Goblin footsteps got closer, louder (how many, he kept asking himself, he kept trying to hear their numbers but he just couldn’t tell, it could be three or twenty or…) 

Finally, he broke free of the crawlspace and into the area they’d shuffled through, though he kept crawling long enough to make space for Sam and Cas to emerge as well, and they all got to their feet with a lot of brushing and bumping. 

This was where they’d shuffled before, and as slow going as it had been, Dean now had to lead the way in a kind of bent sideways skip to speed things along. They couldn’t touch this time, due to the wide loping strides they had to take, Dean just had to listen and hope that both Sam and Cas were still behind him. He kept one arm out front, making little tiny sweeps of the narrow passage for new obstacles. 

The footfalls were close now. He  _ had _ to get out at least to that section of tunnel where it was a bit short but they’d walked mostly normally, nothing else gave them the slightest chance. He had to get out there. He had to get out. Get out  _ get out get out-- _

The walls fell away, just a little, just enough.

Dean took several steps, and a deep breath, and that was all he got before the Goblins were upon them. 

He drew the knife, but before he could swing it blindly into the dark, he heard Sam exclaim, and then he felt his own back hit the wall. Cas’ hand was on his chest, pressing him to the side (must have done the same to Sam) so he could squeeze past. 

There was a brief flash of light, Cas did something but Dean couldn’t tell what. Ahead, past Cas, he made out the faces of at least three Goblins, though he suspected there were more. 

“Sam,  _ go. _ ” Dean ordered. “The way we came from, there was only one goddamn pathway, you don’t need a thread to tell you to go forward, just go.”

“Dean I’m not leav--”

“Sam, do it!” Something got past Cas, and Dean stabbed forward into the tunnel. He got lucky - the crystal dagger found something fleshy, and a disgusting light shot through the creature’s body, flickered, and went out. “Go! You don’t have a weapon, there’s not enough space, just go, we’ll catch up!”

Dean wasn’t sure if that was true, but he knew if he said what he was really thinking  _ (we’ll hold them off while you escape)  _ Sam would plant his feet and refuse to move. 

There was another flash from in front of Cas, and in its splashback Dean saw Sam’s face, anguished and angry, but ultimately obedient in the face of the logic. The light went out and Dean reached out for Cas’ cloak and pressed him gently to the left to stab through the remaining gap and hit the Goblin trying to pass him. 

He focused for a moment on the sound of Sam retreating into the dark. 

Lucifer, Dean thought, had to have known that when he gave Cas the juice, there’d be an effect on the Goblins. He was the one who said that the power made him  _ smell like the gate _ or whatever, so the Goblins listened to him. 

They sure as shit didn’t listen to Cas, though. Instead, they seemed to return to their original state, the way Dean always knew them - wild and feral but stupid and--

Oh.

Dean took a deep breath and when it came out again, it came out singing.

They were too far underground, and the Goblins were too crazed for it to be as effective as it’d be under normal circumstances, but on the next flash, he could see that it made _ some  _ kind of impact. It didn’t stop them coming, but it distracted them, and Dean would take any advantage he could get. 

Cas behaved as if he’d been doing this his entire life. Nothing could have been more convincing to Dean that Cas was meant to have this power,  _ entitled  _ to it. A bird would be born knowing how to build a nest, and Cas was clearly born (or made, as it were) knowing how to do this, even if he hadn’t known that he knew it. He bent past crude knives and claws, taking bites and lashes where he couldn’t evade them. He seemed to ignore the damage he took, caring only for maintaining the momentum he needed to strike with his palm or the heel of his hand.

Whenever he made contact with a face or head, white light flashed from behind the eyes of whatever he’d hit, and under its sallow gray skin, and it slumped to the ground, nothing more than an obstacle to be stepped over. 

When Cas ducked down, Dean stabbed over him. When Cas reached over, Dean dropped low and elbowed and slashed for knees and ankles, anything to keep their attackers distracted, to expose weak points. In the thick of it they found a strange, functional rhythm, part fight, part dance. Dean focused on the beats and the movement and lost himself to it.

It felt  _ good.  _

And then, just like that, it stopped. There wasn’t another Goblin coming. 

Cas’ arms dropped to his sides. Dean leaned against the wall of the tunnel. The place was pitch black again, and quiet. There were no footsteps, only the sound of fatigued breathing - Cas’, and his own, mingled in the small space. 

Breathing meant they were alive. 

Dean reached to where he thought Cas was and made tentative contact with an arm. He gathered a bit of cloak into his fingers.

“We did it,” Dean said between breaths, and a halting chuckle escaped him. They were far from unscathed - Dean would need light to take stock of the damage and he was fairly sure he’d be in a lot of pain whenever the adrenaline wore off, but they were both alive and the Goblins weren’t. “I’m okay, more or less, how ‘bout you?”

He heard the sound of Cas licking his lips and swallowing. “I think so,” Cas eventually answered, but his voice trembled. “I don’t know. I think so. Dean--”

“Yeah,” Dean said, when nothing more articulate came to mind.  

They were alive. 

Cas’ hand was damp when it found Dean’s. Dean felt it grasp around his fingers for a moment, and then trace a jittering, almost  _ searching _ path up his arm. The hand lit on his shoulder for a moment and then kept moving until it found the skin just past his collar. 

They were alive. 

Dean grasped at Cas’ cloak with both hands, twisting in the fabric in his still-shaking fingers. They were already so near, already clinging to one another and breathing together, Dean didn’t need light to know where Cas’ mouth was and press his own against it. 

Cas made this little sound -- almost involuntary, like he was surprised -- and deepened the kiss, as the hand on Dean’s neck moved the short distance to cup his face and hold him there. When Cas’ tongue darted out and across Dean’s lower lip, Dean made a noise of his own. This wasn’t the gentle princely gratitude of the morning that Dean left Cas at the castle. Cas clutched at Dean’s belt and pulled him closer still, and Dean obediently pinned him to the wall.

They kissed until they both stopped shaking.  

They were alive. 

  
  
  
  



	6. First Star I See Tonight

It might as well have been the first sunrise that Dean Winchester ever saw.

Cas had pulled himself up first, through a cleft that could probably be mistaken for a gopher hole from the outside, and then knelt at the edge and extended his hand down to Dean, and that was how Dean emerged: with his hand in Cas’.

Even the pink-streaked first light was enough to make him squint after the deep darkness below. The air was damp and cool and sweet with the smell of alpine flowers that would be closed by noon. 

The first word Dean  _ bellowed _ into the thin, low-rolling mist, loud enough to send birds into the sky, was,  _ “Sam!” _

Down in the tunnel, Dean had experienced three distinct waves of relief: One, when he’d realized that no Goblins were coming from the direction the thread was apparently leading; two, when he’d discovered that there were  _ no  _ branching paths at that point, so there was only _ one  _ way that Sam could have gone when he fled at Dean’s order; and three, when he’d smelled the end of the tunnel.

Now, he had a fourth, when his call was answered. 

“Dean!” Sam had apparently hidden himself well, because he wasn’t far from the hole they’d come out of, and Dean hadn’t even seen him amid the tall grass. He crossed the uneven terrain like a gangly young deer, an irrepressible joy written all over his face. The second he was in range, he pulled Dean into a hug so tight he couldn’t breathe. “You’re alive.”

“Hey,” Dean teased, once he pulled back from the tight hug. “What’d I say, huh? I said we’d catch up, and we caught up. How long were you gonna wait, just outta curiosity?”

Sam laughed. “No idea. Damn, I’m so glad you’re both okay… more or less, anyway. I mean you kinda look like shit, but you made it!”

Dean waved him off. “You shoulda seen  _ Cas _ down there, he was… I mean, I  _ helped,  _ but I… never woulda made it out without him.”

Sam’s face was just all warmth when he hugged Cas next. “Thanks, man. I don’t… know if I’m allowed to do that, but… thanks.  _ Whatever  _ you did, I’m glad you did it.”

Cas, in his turn, was quiet, and while a smile had quirked at the corner of his mouth when Dean complimented him, he didn’t quite seem to share in the ebullience of the moment. 

Dean, at least, felt invincible. They’d done something that should have been impossible, and here they were on the other side of it. He had Sam back, and not only back, but  _ whole _ , seemingly not much worse for the wear. If Cas hadn’t come for them...

“Anybody know where we are?” Sam ventured. “I know, you guys probably want a rest, but--”

“I’m fine,” Cas interrupted. He looked down at his finger, and then he turned a few degrees and his gaze traced a path ahead of him. “This way.”

“Thread,” Dean acknowledged, brows raised and nodding cheerfully at Sam, who shrugged just as cheerfully in response. “Can’t argue with that.”

Truly, he couldn’t, not now. Dean wasn’t sure he’d ever in his life gone this quickly from thinking a thing was insane to believing in it completely, but crossing paths with Cas seemed to be changing quite a lot of things quickly, and he didn’t see where he had much choice but to just go along for the ride. 

The walk itself was a thing of beauty. The rising sun cast long beams through the clusters of trees - the light started off a deep gold, and gradually whitened as the angles of the shadows shifted. He saw a hummingbird for the first time outside of one of Sammy’s books, which he found notable enough to stop Cas in his single-minded tracks to point out.

Cas stood very close when he stopped to watch it dip its beak among the pale petals and Dean was surprised to find he liked that. Much of the time, there was a sort of _expectation_ in people who got into your space -- whether it was hostility or amorousness, they _wanted_ _something_ and you had to figure out how to respond. 

Not Cas -- he just  _ was  _ close, just the same way as when they’d walked to the castle that first night together, like they were falling into one another’s gravity, close enough to touch incidentally -- but there was no demand in it. It just  _ was,  _ and that was enough.

Dean liked that moment so much he stopped Cas again when they passed a lizard on a branch, and again to point out an interesting cloud in a clearing, and later to show him a tree with an unusually shaped trunk, and an explosion of mint growing at the foot of it. He pinched a leaf from the plant and chewed it. Cas furrowed his brows and narrowed his eyes, head tilted like this was a strange thing to do, and Dean wordlessly offered up a leaf. 

“Oh,” Cas said, chewing the leaf thoughtfully. 

Dean glanced over to Sam, whose eyebrows were just  _ all _ the way up, practically in his hairline, and his mouth was split in a grin that was just short of laughter -- deliberately readable, teasing Dean without saying a word. 

“Oh?” Sam smiled around the question. “No mint at the castle?”

“We have mint,” Cas answered dryly. He swallowed the leaf. “Just, not in its... original state. At least, not at the table. How did you know what it was?”

Sam coughed falsely, and maybe Cas caught it, but Dean was pretty sure he didn’t. 

“Sammy… taught me,” Dean admitted to Cas, filling him in on the story. “When we were kids.”

“And you didn’t believe me for the longest time!” Sam pointed a finger. “You thought I was trying to prank you!”

“I mean, come on,  _ this leaf is delicious _ , what kinda idiot just  _ believes _ something like that!?” Dean defended, incredulous. 

Cas looked down to the side, at the bush that had produced the leaf. His jaw tensed, and a look of distant consideration passed over his face like a dark cloud. Dean watched his hands come together, right ahead of left, as he attended to the thread that no one else could see. 

He gestured in a direction, and began to walk without waiting to see if he was followed. 

Sam gestured to Cas’ retreating back, and Dean shot a tight glare back at Sam.  _ Your fault,  _ he mouthed. 

Sam walked in close as they trailed behind. “You said it, not me,” Sam whispered. 

“Yeah but you set me up,” Dean whispered back.

“I didn’t need to set you up to be a jerk, you did a great job all on your own.” Sam looked at Dean, then up at Cas, then back to Dean again. “Well?”

Dean sighed, rolled his eyes dramatically, and jogged to catch up with Cas. 

“Cas, I didn’t mean--”

“I know.”

“I’m… kind of a jerk.”

“It must make life easier for you,” Cas said, his focus never leaving where Dean supposed the thread’s path must lead. “That you’re so certain of that.”

“What?”

“I don’t think you’re a jerk, Dean, but if  _ you _ do, I suppose it must relieve you of the pressure to attempt to be otherwise.”

“That’s…” Dean frowned, closed his mouth before anything stupid came out of it. Once he processed how that one sentence made his whole perspective do a jolly headstand, he then opened it again. “Thanks for that, I think.”

“Thank Hannah.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“I told her once,” Cas said, facing East and wincing against the sun, “That my being heir was some kind of mistake, that I could never… that I couldn’t connect with people the way she did, so I couldn’t possibly be as good of a ruler as she could be. She said that that was very convenient for me to say, because then I didn’t have to try. 

”Huh,” Was all Dean could muster to respond with. “I guess she was pretty smart.”

“She probably  _ would _ have at least  _ smelled  _ the leaf first.” There was a little hint of a smile on Cas’ face as he nodded his way through the admission. 

“Uh, guys?” Sam called from where he was carefully trailing them. “I kinda gotta pee, can you wait up for me?”

Dean gave him a thumbs up and he vanished in the opposite direction behind a couple of trees. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t, but Sam was pretty transparently trying to give them a minute. 

“Dean,” Cas looked down. “Can I ask you an extremely direct question?”

“Uh… sure?” Dean began uncertainly, and then stopped him: “Is it about whether I  kissed you because I was hopped up on terror, or because I have a thing for you?”

“I… yes, more or less. How did you--”

“I didn’t know. I just sort of hoped, ‘cause I wanted to ask you the same thing.”

“I also thought it might have to do with the…” Cas gestured vaguely, “magic… thing.”

“Well… I’m not gonna pretend that isn’t  _ awesome _ , but, no.”

Cas risked eye contact, and Dean felt his attention hook there.  _ Well? _ His face said, without his mouth moving.

“Which is it? Uh…” Dean let out a small chuckle that was rattling anxiously around his chest and throat. “Alright, look, we’re being extremely direct, right? So… both?”

Cas dropped his gaze to the grass again, and his face relaxed into a weak smile. He made this sort of punctuated huffing sound, it took Dean a second to realize it was a laugh.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I got champagne taste on a beer budget, huh?” Dean joked at his own expense. “Leave it to me to--”

“No, I’m not laughing at you. I am merely,” Cas paused to search for the word, “relieved, I suppose.”

“You too? Both, I mean” Dean asked, unable to keep the hope out of the word.

“Yes,” Cas gave a small, slow nod, but then sighed. He certainly didn’t look like he was as pleased to say it as Dean was to hear it, and it gave Dean pause. After a moment’s thought, he dropped the other shoe. “It hardly matters, though.”

“‘Cause of the uh…?” Dean gestured between them, if the difference in their stations was a visible barrier. 

Sam emerged from the trees and jogged over to catch up with them.

“No, I don’t… Dean,  _ one _ of my two remaining brothers is creating an army of Goblins with the faces of humans for his own ends. If I  _ do not _ tell the other one -- the one who may have spent my entire upbringing lying to me -- this will continue unimpeded and the problem will grow beyond our land, with no practical limit. If I  _ do _ tell Michael, he’s as likely as not to burn the whole kingdom to the ground for even a small chance of putting a stop to it. 

“There is also a reasonable chance that merely by possessing this power, I will be perceived as a threat, or a traitor, in league with Lucifer.” Cas said, looking at his hands as if  _ they  _ were the betrayers. He’d started sounding frustrated and impatient, but by the end, he’d settled into same matter-of-fact tone that one might use to glance at the sky and predict rain. 

The moment that Cas caught sight of Sam in his peripheral vision, he turned and began to press on. 

Sam must have just barely caught the end of that, if any of it, and gave Dean a look - brows up, little nod, half-smile -  _ Everybody okay? _

Dean wiggled his hand at his side.  _ So-so, could be better. _

“When does Michael get back from his trip?” Dean hurried forward to walk alongside Cas “How long do we have to figure out how to handle this?”

“I believe he returns in four days, but Dean, there is no  _ we. _ ”

To hell with it, what did it matter if Sam heard? “Then why the hell’d you bother asking me how I felt?”

Cas stopped walking. “I am probably going to be  _ at best _ imprisoned, at worst, _ tortured  _ for information I  _ don’t have _ , quite possibly killed. I asked because I was curious, and because I selfishly wanted something pleasant to think about when that happens.” He was clearly struggling a little with keeping composure. “I wish things were different. You, and Sam… you’ll be hunted just for your tenuous connection to all this. You have to go away from here, as far away as you possibly can.”

“No!” Dean ran around in front of Cas and stood in his path. “Hey, no! We may not be… royalty or whatever, but this is our home too, and we’re not just going to walk away when it’s in trouble! Right Sam?”

Sam was quiet when he answered, but firm. “Right. I’m with Dean.”

Cas regarded Dean and Sam in turn through narrowed eyes. “What  _ exactly _ do you think you can do? You  _ saw _ Lucifer in there. Dean described what  _ I  _ was able to do as  _ awesome _ and that’s a  _ tiny fraction _ of the power he has, without even counting whatever soft power his agents are gaining for him. And Michael? If even _ part  _ of what Lucifer said is true, who knows what he’s hiding?”

“Alright, let me put this a different way,” Dean challenged. He took a chance on another line of reasoning. “When you left the castle to come and find us… how did your family take that?”

“Initially? They forbade it, of course.”

“And you were armed with, what, exactly, at that point?”

“A blade, and the thread.”

“Okay. So you ran off to take on a mine full of Goblins, by yourself, with a knife and a string, why?”

“To follow the lead you had given me, to gain valuable intelligence, and… I hoped that if you were in trouble, I could help.”

“So you ignored all of the smart advice to defend your home and do what you thought was right, despite what had to be pretty shitty odds. I don’t suppose that sounds familiar.”

“You are  _ extraordinarily  _ stubborn,” Cas said, and Dean didn’t miss Sam’s stupid little closed-mouth smile.

“ _ Now _ you’re getting the picture!” Dean clapped Cas on the shoulder. 

“Fine,” Cas said, “I should have guessed based on your earlier predicament that you were both suicidally hardheaded.”

“Well, welcome to the club,” Dean said, “If we live, we’ll get some little guild cards made up, how does that sound?”

Sam made a thoughtful noise. “Based on what Lucifer said, and what we saw down there, he’s not making the Goblins actually  _ become _ human, he’s just making them blend in, right? So there must be some way to tell them apart, even after the… treatment, or whatever.”

“See?” Dean gestured to Sam. “He’s already brainstorming. So, let’s walk and strategize. Where’s that thing pointing now?”

Cas looked down at his hand, and then followed a line that Dean couldn’t see. His gaze rose until he was looking right at Dean. He glanced up from somewhere around Dean’s shoulders to his face, and their eyes met. 

There was an odd moment where they regarded one another, before Cas pointed over Dean’s shoulder. “That way,” he said, and walked around Dean to begin leading the way once again. 

“Don’t start,” Dean said, to Sam’s  _ what-was-that nevermind-doesn’t-matter it-was-hilarious  _ face. “Do not say a word.”

As they walked, they reviewed what had happened down in the mines. Sam described his experience after he’d fallen, and Dean detailed his own bout with getting captured in search of Sam. They catalogued what they knew, and what they didn’t know, and Cas occasionally took his focus off navigation long enough to provide background information, or correct mistaken impressions. 

They kept circling back around to one point of Lucifer’s bragging.

_ \--oh, and my best-if-least-loyal servant, the new foreman of the biggest mine! He thinks I don’t know he hates me, it’s cute-- _

The distant implication that the spring cave-in may have been manufactured made Dean’s head swim with a combination of anger and confusion, but didn’t have half the potential importance of the fact that Lucifer was absolutely talking about Crowley. 

There was also some exploration of the magic that Cas now carried (with more regal bearing than any crown Dean had ever seen a man wear.) Cas and Sam filled in the gaps in Dean’s knowledge there. 

“Basically,” Sam lectured, “King Charles was just a regular guy originally, or at least that’s what’s in the books -- Cas, feel free to correct me here. He came up somewhere in these mountains and found something he called ‘the seed of the door.’”

“You’re telling me he  _ grew _ a door?” Dean asked, incredulous. 

“Pretty much, I guess.”

Cas jumped in there -- “The way it was explained to me, there was a small amount of magic bleeding through where this world intersects with another. He found a way to absorb it, amplify it, and feed it back into that place, until the door opened and incredible amounts of Thaumaturgical power came out.”

“Wait, if there’s… intersections, or whatever,” Dean frowned, “What if that’s not the only one? What if there’s other… door-seeds out there?”

“None have yet been found, at least not that I have heard of,” Cas reported. “It is entirely possible, however. Many have speculated that to be the case.” 

“So then--” Sam looked to Cas, who ceded Dean’s attention with a nod, “he was kind of an expert at manipulating this power already, so it was easy for him to absorb it, and…”

Dean tried to pay as much attention as he could, but he kept getting distracted. He managed to pick up the broad strokes -- The Goblins came out of the door from some other world. Charles made the Thaumaturges sort of like how regular people were made, but instead of a woman contributing the other half, it was magic.

The first ones had apparently set up shop here, on the mountain where it all started, but Lucifer had some kinda hissy fit, killed at least one, maybe two of his brothers in the process, and got put under a mountain. That was apparently when Charles himself vamoosed off somewhere (Cas mused on Charles’ probable grief and shame, Dean privately thought the guy sounded like a coward) and while he made lots more kids, he sent them away almost immediately and they quickly spread out seeking their own kingdoms and got ganked -- overthrown, defeated in war, same dumb things  _ humans _ always did. They were tough, but not invincible. 

Turned out only the more recent ones had hung around to hold together what was left of the ruling family. 

“Hey Cas,” Dean had found a hole. “If Michael’s been saying that magic’s been dead two hundred years at least, how does he explain you and your sister being created?”

Cas huffed a dark laugh. “Our father’s  _ final _ miracles. Worked out well for him, since no one’s heard from the man since we were made, but it sounds pretty thin now. More evidence of my own gullibility, I suppose.”

Dean knew enough about believing in someone hard enough to overlook the obvious evidence of their deceit.  

At that point, Sam got into some business about a theory of human souls that Dean only halfway listened to, the rest of his mind being tied up in how to make use of Crowley, and his alleged hate for Lucifer. There were risks -- like the risk that Lucifer had lied to bait them into going down this path -- but if they played their cards right, and got lucky,  there was a lot to be gained.

The roughest sketches of an idea began to take shape in his mind. 

They strode bouncingly down a long, steep section of land, making a lot of progress quickly. Eventually that led into a low-slung area covered in brush rather than full forest. The clearing gave them a view of the land ahead, which swelled up in another rounded rise like the beginning of a wave on the sea. 

It felt right, somehow, the three of them together. It wasn’t that Dean had felt an  _ absence _ when he was with Sam -- they were a unit all their own -- but there was something about the atmosphere now that gave Dean the sense of a chord resolving in a song, of everything where it should be. For a moment, he slowed, and let Sam and Cas get a bit farther ahead down the slope.

When they both stopped and turned to see what he was doing -- Cas squinting up the hill against the sky, brows knit together in an impatient question, and Sam with his forehead crinkled and his palms up -- he promised himself he’d remember that moment, that image, for the rest of his probably-short life.  

“What?” He asked them both, “I slow down for one second…”

They turned and went on, if subtly slower to let him catch up. 

For a second, he entertained a fantasy where they all actually did run away -- not just him and Sam, but Cas too -- where they left this doomed mountain with as much of its riches as they could carry on their backs, bought horses, and rode south until the weather was warm all year and Goblins were nothing more than stories. 

Reality intruded, though. Even in that fantasy he couldn’t ignore the truth: that if something wasn’t done, there might not be a place in the world where that would be the case. Even more grimly, it occurred to him that it could already be too late. 

Cas was the first to reach the top of the little ascent, and he stopped there. For a moment, Dean thought he was waiting for them, for him and Sam, but he didn’t turn back, and his posture was stiff -- frozen, even. 

Dean and Sam shared a glance, and hurried up to where they could get a glimpse of what had given him pause:

From where they stood, they had a perfectly clear sight-line down to the castle bridge. Across it, there paraded a ridiculous number of heavily-burdened armored horses, and soldiers bearing flags, at least four days ahead of schedule.

King Michael was home. 

 


	7. Lodestone

Castiel closed his eyes and slipped away again. His memories swam.

  
  


* * *

 

 

The moment that they’d had the castle as a landmark, they could have split off -- Castiel could have scuttled down the mountain and Dean and Sam would almost certainly have been fine getting back. 

He didn’t do that.

Castiel remembered looking down at his ring, searching for the path of the thread to tell him what to do, but the thread was gone without so much as a glint or a flicker. Something seized in his chest. He had trouble with moments like this, acting without direction, especially when the things he thought he knew kept getting twisted or disproven. When he found the thread gone, a part of him genuinely wondered if it had been there at all or if he’d imagined the whole thing. 

  
  


_ “Be safe. Keep Sam safe, keep them all safe as best as you can, but do not be afraid or ashamed to run if the time comes. Please.” _

 

On that rise overlooking Michael’s traveling party, for the second time that day (arguably the third, if he counted the kiss) Castiel made, in his memory, what he considered the selfish call. 

“I’m going to walk you back,” he’d said. 

Dean made a face. “Is that what the thread’s telling you?”

“No,” Castiel half-admitted, though he didn’t say that the thread was gone. “But I think it would be wise.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Sam worried and gestured down the mountain. “Isn’t Michael going to be pissed if you aren’t there?”

“He’s going to be, as you put it,  _ pissed _ no matter what. They must have sent a message. He’ll know that I was gone in any case.” Castiel remembered turning to face them both. “As long as all paths lead to my own damnation, I might as well take a detour to ensure _ your  _ safety.”

Sam had looked over at Dean, at that part of the memory, and they’d shared some kind of non-verbal discussion that Castiel could understand no better than if they’d spoken out loud in some foreign language. 

“Alright, Cas,” Dean had said, though there was wariness in his voice “Maybe you’re right.”

That in itself was a relief. 

They came down the side of the hill at an angle, he remembered that -- to allow them better cover on the descent. No one wanted to be spotted by soldiers, not yet. As soon as they reasonably could, they dipped back into the woods and Dean led them back. 

Sam’s goodbye had been quick. He’d thanked Castiel, given him a quick hug, and then he’d disappeared through the door. Castiel knew that there were areas in which his socialization had gaps, but he was aware enough to understand that Sam was much, much more graceful in this regard and had intended to provide them with a private moment. 

  
  


_ “What about the blade? You should take it back, Cas. You're gonna need it." _

  
  


A long time ago, Castiel remembered Naomi going on a long diplomatic trip with Michael. When they returned, she had brought him a gift: two small stones, shiny, black and smooth. Castiel had thought they were magic, but Naomi promised him that they were not. If held a certain way, the holder could feel them pull towards one another, but if you turned one around, it was almost impossible to make them touch, so powerfully did they repel. 

Lodestone, she had called it. 

Now, Castiel wondered whether it was possible to experience the push and the pull at the same time. The castle was like lodestone to him, and if his head was the pulling end, his heart was the opposite. 

  
  


_ “Keep it.”  _

  
  


Castiel had known it was foolish to let Dean keep the blade that Michael had earmarked for him. He told himself it was more a matter of practicality than sentiment. To fight a Goblin -- or a Thaumaturge, if it came to that -- with an ordinary weapon was risky at best. Goblins healed rapidly from normal wounds, and either they didn’t feel pain, or they felt it and they didn’t care. 

These special blades were made of crystal that their father had brought back from the gate and given to every child he made. As Thaumaturges fell, Michael had been incredibly circumspect about collecting them from their dead brethren and distributing them to only the soldiers who most needed them.

A slash would cause a _ true _ pain reaction in a Goblin, and a deep cut or stab would kill them almost instantly. 

Dean knew little to none of the history or mechanics. He knew that it worked, and since the tunnel, he knew how to use it. Castiel had to be satisfied with that. Whatever happened next, whatever inevitably foolish move he made, he’d at least have a chance. 

It was logic, but he would be lying to say there was no sentiment involved whatsoever. 

  
  


_ “Stop acting like you’re about to die. We’re gonna figure this out, we can fix this.” _

 

_ “I envy your confidence.” _

  
  


He’d walked alone back to the castle alone, once in awhile thoughtlessly pressing his fingers to his lips. 

  
  


_“Fine._ _If you’re gonna be like that, with the dramatic goodbyes, you gotta do it right.”_

 

_ “Right?” _

 

_ “Like this.” _

  
  
  


* * *

 

 

The memory faded. 

Someone was making a noise. There was a sharp, closed-off vowel sound followed by a hiss, giving the impression of a disturbed adder. What came next was softer, warmer, more open -- like wind chimes, or coins falling to the floor. 

Hearing it all together made him cringe away from it, though at the same time, it got his attention. It seemed important for some reason and it took a moment to click into place that it was his  _ name, _ being called from so far away that it was just at the edge of what he could hear. 

Castiel. 

He stood in the darkness at the bottom of a sea, looking up at the membrane of consciousness above. The name was a fishhook, buried in his head and tugging.

“Castiel--”

“Hannah?” Castiel turned around, only to see no one at all. 

“Castiel--”

He couldn’t hang onto the ground, the name had him and it was pulling him up and up past flashing lights and edged colors he’d never seen before and he hit the surface and--

Castiel took a breath, deep and sharp. His vision was dark and blurry before it resolved into the image of a dingy, dimly-lit room with a dirt floor. 

“He’s awake.” That was Naomi’s voice, but… different. Less harsh, maybe even frightened. When her face came into view, it too was soft -- unmanaged -- for a moment. 

“Good.” Anna’s voice this time, and Castiel had to turn his face to see her, fully armored with her brow deeply furrowed. “Charlie, get him up.”

“No, wait,” Castiel tried to get his bearings. “Wait, Naomi, your--” he couldn’t quite bring himself to say the word  _ hair.  _

She followed his gaze and raised one hand to her head, touching it, suddenly self-conscious. Where it had once been long enough to tie pragmatically back in a deep auburn bun, there was hardly anything of it left now, and what jagged tufts were left were snow white. 

“Not. Now.” Anna was firm. She gestured to the other side of Castiel. “Charlie, I  _ said _ get him up. We have to make sure he stays awake this time. If we have to run, we can’t carry him.”

He turned to the young soldier on his right, her red hair helmet-mussed. “General’s orders,” she said apologetically as she helped him to his feet.

Pain shocked through him and dizziness almost overtook him entirely. He would have fallen if it weren’t for the steadying hand of this soldier. Charlie? Wait, she was the one who--

“You--”

“Yep,” She shrugged nervously and did an abortive version of a soldier’s bow. “Your highness.”

As the first wave of pain faded, other, smaller sensations rose up to bother him. Tingling in his feet, and there was something wrong with his face -- like something crawling on his chin and cheeks, and he flexed his mouth experimentally, before one hand flew up to touch…

Coarse hair. He rubbed his face and found a solid half-inch of beard. What he didn’t feel, on his hand, was the thread-ring. One hand searched the other, but both were bare. 

“What happened?” Panic swelled inside him. He whipped around, first one way and then the next, begging of all three women in the room, “You _ have _ to tell me what’s going on.”

Anna put a hand on his shoulder. Some of the ice left her voice when she said, “Soon, Castiel. I promise.”

And then, as if to put a neat bow on this state of utter confusion, someone just  _ appeared  _ in the room, right near the middle -- a man, dressed all in black. Physically, he wasn’t exactly imposing, but something about him suggested power, even aside from his apparent lack of need for doors. 

“Well,” He addressed the gathered with dry surprise. “Our dear prince, not so  _ departed  _ after all.”

“Who are you?” Castiel growled. He searched for the reservoir of power he’d had before, and found it mostly drained, but not wholly empty. “How did you get here?”

“Down, boy.” The man spoke without a hint of respect, but nevertheless extended his hand to shake. “Crowley.”

“Cr--Anna! Naomi!” Castiel’s eyes went wide. He remembered the name, he tried to warn them, “Get back, he’s a--”

“Goblin, Yes,” Crowley finished. “I know. They know. They know I know they know. Etcetera.”

No one reacted. Castiel closed his eyes and took a long, steadying breath. He reached for the thread-ring again, before remembering it was missing. He needed to find it -- or Hannah. 

“No one’s filled him in?” Crowley’s gaze jumped from Anna to Naomi, even to Charlie. 

“He just woke up a moment ago,” Naomi excused. “I don’t think he even remembers being captured.”

“Ah. I’m just in time for story hour,” Crowley said. “This should be fun. Who’s going to do the honors? The pawn?” He looked at Anna. “Or... the manipulatrix?” He turned to Naomi. 

“You’re the foreman of the mine,” Castiel said, putting together the pieces of a path that led back to where he’d left off.

“Very good!” Crowley condescended. “Give the boy a sweet.”

“Dean? Sam? Are they alright?”

A slow smile spread on Crowley’s face and he narrowed his eyes. “Awfully  _ concerned _ about a couple of sub-par miners. Dime-a-dozen, really. Why  _ those two _ ?”

Castiel felt for the well of power again. He gathered enough to take hold of a wad of fabric at the front of Crowley’s black tunic and the clasp of his cloak and lift him off the ground. “Tell me.”

“Fine, fine, just put me down.”

“Castiel, we need him,” Anna was forceful, if far from pleased. 

Castiel obliged. 

Crowley dusted himself off. “They’re alive, at least for the moment. Everybody take a breath. Lucifer can get a bead on Michael through their twin thing, at least as well if not better than the other way round. Last I heard, Michael’s not beating down your door or anyone else’s. He’s too busy getting ready for his big play. The man’s nothing if not circumspect.”

Castiel’s patience ran out. If they weren’t going give him information, he was going to take it. He rounded on Naomi first, following the magical instinct to touch her forehead with his hand.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Anna reach out to try and stop him, but Naomi held up her hand.

“Let him,” she said, words weighed down by what sounded like pain, and Castiel took a moment to be surprised that she understood what he was doing. 

Castiel saw.

  
  


* * *

**_THREE WEEKS EARLIER_ **

  
  


“Your Highness.” Naomi dropped to one knee and bent her head. It was a relief to do so. Michael stood in front of his throne, regarding her with a certain intensity, but that was ordinary for him. 

What wasn’t ordinary were the bodies: several Goblins, and three seeming-humans, crumpled around the room. Their skin, as much as she could see, was charred in scrawling, twisting patterns like the cracks in glass. 

She couldn’t see any of their faces, the way they were positioned, and for that she was grateful. 

“Rise,” Michael said, as if everything was normal. 

Naomi got to her feet, but did kept her eyes downcast in deference. “Why have I been summoned?”

“Naomi.” The name was stretched out by Michael’s baritone. He approached, and once in arms’ reach, he reached out and lifted her chin. “So reliable.”

“I… do my best.”

“Trustworthy, loyal, and effective, practically from the day you were made and delivered to my doorstep -- even as a child, if I gave you an order, I could depend on its… execution.”

“Your highness.” Goosepimples followed a wave of frisson at the praise, though she was truly unsure if she deserved it. 

“I wonder how far that loyalty extends...” His finger lingered on the tip of her chin.

She configured her face into a question, but said nothing. 

“We are the last of a dying breed, sister. So few of us left,” Michael commented. He clasped both hands behind his back and turned to the great stained glass windows. “Our time is almost up. It’s so… difficult… to see any of us go astray.”

“Astray, your highness?” Naomi could feel her heartbeat, she could hear it in her ears.  _ Castiel.  _ She knew Michael too well. His orders had been that Castiel was not to leave the castle before his return, and yet here was Michael, returned (early, no less) and Castiel was nowhere in sight.

Michael had ridden up and everyone had arranged themselves in formation to greet him, except for Castiel. The presentation was otherwise perfect, but Michael’s eyes had hardly strayed from the empty place where Castiel did not stand. 

Naomi had known right away that she was going to be held accountable. She always was. 

“You were made too late to have known my brother, Naomi -- Lucifer, I mean,” Michael clarified. “If you met him, you would understand.”

“I trust your account of his character, Your Highness,” Naomi assured. “Isn’t he imprisoned, still?”

“I’m afraid there’s no way to truly comprehend his treachery outside of…” He spoke slowly, and paused as he chose his next words. “...Painful experience.”

Naomi felt something clench in her stomach. She swallowed it back. 

“You  _ know _ what I have long suspected,” Michael said. He didn’t need to elaborate: his theories of Lucifer’s escape -- how he did it, where he was now, what he might do next -- were elaborate, and well-known to Naomi. Whether he was getting some cryptic signal from a twin-connection Naomi could never comprehend, or whether it was all in his mind was hard to tell. Even Naomi questioned it, if only internally.

“Your Highness?” It was all she had to say, to get him to go on. 

“I have confirmation, now. I have  _ proof,  _ and I know what he plans to do.”

When she was young, Naomi once read fiction in which the hero’s blood was described as  _ running cold.  _ She could not imagine a better way to describe the feeling.

“I do not blame you for what has happened with Castiel, my dear sister,” Michael said, making Naomi’s next swallow a little easier. “Lucifer is simply too seductive. Castiel has always had… tendencies. You know this as well as I.”

She had to be careful here. No matter what he was saying now, his attention to Castiel was impeccable. Beneath any frustration was always a sort of strange, twisted hope and affection that Naomi resented at times and never fully understood, but  _ always _ knew better than to cross. Ultimately she kept her mouth shut and pasted a respectfully attentive expression on her face.

“I met with a Goblin,” Michael said. 

“You…” Naomi furrowed her brow. “I don’t understand. Can they speak?”

“They can now.” Michael looked around. He spoke slowly, deliberately. “Those men are not human, Naomi, they are merely disguised by Lucifer’s influence. I felt it. Of course, they are still Goblins. Still weak. It was easy to induce.... Confessions. I only hope that Lucifer can sense me as I can sense him. It is only right that he feel what I did to them.”

“What did they say?”

“Everything.” Michael’s mouth twitched into something that was almost a smile, but not quite. “Our mines are  _ infected.  _ I don’t doubt that most, if not  _ all _ of the workers are Goblins, or else under Lucifer’s spell, down to the last man. The entire system will need to be  _ cleansed _ at any cost. I need your help, sister.”

“Anything, Your Highness.”

“You will be pleased to know that Castiel has been apprehended,” Michael preceded, and it was true - she  _ was  _ pleased, though something about the way he said it made her uneasy as well. “I want you to come with me, to see him.”

What could she do but agree, no matter what reservations tugged at the corners of her mind? 

She followed him, precisely a step and a half behind and to the left, down into the bowels below the castle. Perched upon a narrow plateau, there was a lot of space beneath, and no one but Michael truly knew every path that it concealed. 

There were pantries and wine cellars and dungeons and storerooms and much of it was forbidden, an edict she had never even considered breaking.

It was rare that he took her down here to begin with. 

A small staircase branched, and at the bottom, there was a door. Michael did something so small there: all he did was rest his hand on the knob and caused it to  _ click _ unlocked. 

_ No magic left in this world, save for the dregs that keep us alive.  _

He’d said it a thousand times.

Maybe she imagined it. She must have imagined it. There was no way he just  _ used  _ magic. In mere moments, she would realize why he acted carelessly: she would know this was only the tip of the iceberg.

The door swung open ahead of him to reveal a small room with a dirt floor, and at the center of it, a stained fabric stretcher on a wooden frame, resting on two blocks, one taller than the other, so that it laid at an angle. 

Resting upon it, unconscious and bound to the structure, was Castiel. No -- he wasn’t just  _ bound  _ to the structure, she realized as she saw the blood, he was  _ nailed  _ to it. Symbols were carved into each nail, symbols she’d only seen in books, used to paralyze a Thaumaturge completely, to drive them inside themselves, away from their physical form.

Did it hurt, or was Castiel too far away to feel it?

For a moment, Naomi couldn’t breathe. The room was so small, the ceiling so low, the space so deep underground, there was no  _ air _ down here, he’d brought her down to suffocate. 

“I know,” Michael said. He laid a hand on her shoulder. “It is grim. I am sorry you have to see this, but you must know that it is necessary.”

“I…” Naomi swallowed. “I trust you.”

“Surely,” Michael nodded, “But still, I feel compelled to explain.”

Her hearing went in and out as she concentrated on hiding her panic. She caught most of it -- he paced the room, leading her eye back and forth across Castiel’s body, as he explained that when Castiel had run off, whatever he’d said to her, the truth was that he’d gone to meet with Lucifer, and that he could prove it. 

Michael took up a blade, then, an ordinary kitchen knife, and sliced down across Castiel’s exposed chest. 

It only bled for a the briefest fraction of a moment before the wound turned to a bright line and the skin was sealed. 

It wasn’t unusual for Thaumaturges to heal swiftly, even now, but this was something entirely different. 

“Your Highness,” Naomi let the words fall out, “I do not mean to question you but--”

“The presence of magic, I know.” Michael sighed. “I respect your cleverness, your curiosity. So, how do  _ you  _ think he came by this power?”

There was no scar on Castiel’s chest, it was like nothing had touched him. “Lucifer?” She guessed. 

“Indeed.”

“So…” Naomi speculated very carefully. “You mean to tell me he has magic,  _ real magic _ , and that Castiel is in league with him?”

“I’m afraid so.”

She could feel herself about to protest. She would regret this, surely, but the idea was just… Castiel had always been  _ difficult  _ at times, especially since Hannah’s death, but this? There had to be--

“Another explanation?” Michael said, in a demonstration of his  _ own _ power.

Naomi froze. 

Michael smiled. “Darling sister, I trust you’ll keep  _ all of _ this between us for the time being.”

“Of course, Your Highness,” she said, though she wasn’t even sure exactly what  _ this  _ was.

“I’ve always done what I had to do,” he said. “Now, you will do the same.”

Some kind of test. It had to be some kind of test. But of what? Her mind spun up as she ran possibilities.

“You have it in you, sister,” Michael’s voice was smooth and even, and he stood so close. “Haven’t you ever wondered why it seems that, no matter what you say to people, they seem to believe you, and follow your orders? Why they seem compelled to speak the truth to you? Did you truly believe it was your status alone?”

She said nothing. All at once, she did not trust her own mouth. 

“Let me guide you.” Michael picked up her hand and brought it toward Castiel’s resting head. 

  
  


* * *

 

 

 

Naomi pulled Castiel’s hand away. “You don’t want to see--”

“I do,” Castiel insisted. Three weeks. He’d been unconscious for three weeks, presumably maintained only by magic. No wonder he was starving, exhausted, and running low on the power he’d been given. 

“Please, Castiel. Don’t.” 

“Then  _ tell me _ ,” He insisted. He’d never seen her like this, red-faced, crying. Had she ever cried before? He couldn’t be certain. 

“He made you… retreat. He wanted me find you, inside yourself, to read your mind. He gave me magic, Castiel, and the way it felt was…”

Anna rested a hand on Naomi’s back. 

Naomi pressed on: “I tried to do what he wanted, at first.” She was resolute, unbending, if only for a moment her previous self. “Castiel, he knows. He knows  _ everything. _ But… I do as well.”

_ “Where is the ring?”  _ Castiel demanded. He hadn’t seen it in the vision, either. “The one I showed you, the one Hannah gave me, the one you  _ lied to me about” _

Naomi just shook her head. Wherever it was, either she didn’t know or wasn’t saying.

There was a pile of sacks of something against one wall, rancid grain or something of the sort, and Castiel lowered himself to sit on it. He watched Naomi run her hand through the remnants of her hair. She didn’t even have to tell him the rest, he could guess well enough from what he’d seen, what he’d  _ felt.  _

“You defied him,” Castiel said. 

“I had to,” Naomi answered. “After what I… after what you  _ showed _ me.”

“He lied to all of us,” Anna said. “To everyone, for… ever.”

“I know that,” Castiel said to the ground.

Naomi stepped out from under Anna’s hand. “Yes, he lied, but… this is  _ different. _ He wasn’t always…”

“Crazy?” Crowley offered. “Off his head? Round the bend? Cracked?”

“Desperate. Single-minded.” Naomi shot a glare at Crowley. “He was always a little fixated on Lucifer, but now?”

She was still defending him, in her way. It would be impossible to understand if he hadn’t seen through her eyes, hadn’t known what she knew, hadn’t felt the awe and the reverence and the conflict. 

But he’d felt it, seen it, known it, and now it was hard to harden his heart. 

Castiel wondered, but not aloud, if Lucifer’s newfound power was the cause of Michael’s madness, or if this would always have happened, if this was a foregone conclusion from the day that Lucifer had been imprisoned, perhaps even the day he was made. 

“Yes, yes,” Crowley huffed. “Very sad, family terrible, blah blah blah. Are we all on the same page now, more or less?”

“You said he was preparing for his  _ big play, _ ” Castiel looked at Crowley, at the mask he wore, at what was underneath. “What is it, and how do you know?”

“Ah. Well.” Crowley smiled, and it made Castiel want to burn him out from inside like he’d done with the Goblins under the mountain. “About that. There is a  _ little  _ more to catch you up on, I believe.”  


	8. Where There's Smoke

“If you’re gonna be like that, with the dramatic goodbyes,” Dean said, “you gotta do it right.”

“Right?” Castiel asked.

“Like this,” Dean said. 

Dean held Cas’ face when he kissed him. 

One hand on each side of his face, mouth on Cas’ mouth, he slid his tongue against Cas’ lower lip, and when Cas made a sound -- just a voice to his breath -- Dean  _ memorized _ it.

Dean’s hands slipped down to Cas’ shoulders, his grip light but firm, unwilling to let go. They both knew what it would mean. Cas’ eyes fluttered shut for a moment, and Dean just watched his body, his chest, his arms, as he took a deep draw of air.

As he let it out, he opened his eyes again, and they found Dean’s immediately. At this range, Dean could tell when Cas looked from one of his eyes to the other. Was Cas memorizing too? 

Neither of them actually said goodbye. 

Dean let his hands fall down Cas’ arms, their fingers brushing just before they lost contact. When they did, it was time for Cas to go.

He didn’t go inside until Cas had completely disappeared from view. 

“Alright,” Dean said to Sam, because these walls were not exactly a fortress, and besides, he’d seen how things were on the road home. Sam wasn’t stupid. “Go ahead. Say it.”

“Say what?” Sam said, but there was that little smile again. 

“Say you’re gonna go buy me a dress to wear ‘cause I’m such a girl. Say you’re gonna boil me down for syrup because I’m a sap. Say I’m so cheesy you’re gonna melt me on a crust of bread.”

“Well,” Sam said, barely restraining his amusement, “I  _ was _ thinking we might need to take a trip to the dentist in the city, ‘cause you two are so sweet I’m getting a toothache.”

Dean didn’t need to be told to start putting together supper. It wasn’t much more than a stew made of whatever was in the cellar -- some dry aged meat and a lot of root vegetables -- but it was a relief.

“Crowley’s our next step, huh?” Sam said through a mouthful of food. “I just don’t know how to get him on our side.”

“You could start by asking nicely,” Crowley suggested, appearing in front of the fireplace. 

Sam’s chair scraped against the floor as he moved to stand. 

Dean pulled Cas’ knife from his belt. 

“My my,” Crowley smirked, observing them. “Is that any way to treat a guest? And your  _ boss _ no less? I knew you rock-breakers were rude, but--”

“Cut to the chase,” Dean growled. “We know what you are, Crowley.”

“Oh sure,” Sam scolded Dean, “Just tell him what we know, why don’t you?”

Crowley visibly noted the mismatched chairs and sat down in the final unoccupied one. “Let’s all just take a  _ deep  _ breath, and  _ sit down. _ ” He snapped his fingers, and the chairs behind Sam and Dean moved in toward the table. The leading edge pressed against the back of his knees, and after a quick, silent conference with Sam, they both took the hint. 

“Now, that’s better.” Crowley’s voice was low, but acidic. “Seems to me that if you can pull your heads from your back ends for just a moment, we all might be better off for it, especially given that Lucifer sent me here to kill you.”

“He did what?” Dean worked his jaw.

Sam’s spoke with tension and resignation in his tone. “He only promised not to stop us leaving. Didn’t say anything about after we got out.”

“Bingo.”

“So, what,” Dean speculated, “He got what he wanted out of Cas and he’s just gonna--”

“Tie up loose ends, yes,” Crowley finished for him. “The way I heard it, he thinks Cas might be a little sentimental, and he’s concerned it might make him do something… stupid.”

“And he thinks killing us is gonna get him in Cas’ good graces? How the hell exactly does he figure that?” Dean protested.

“Think for a second,” Crowley urged. 

“He wants you to frame King Michael,” Sam said quietly. “I don’t know how, but… that’s the plan, isn’t it? Set it all up to look like Michael killed us.”

Crowley turned to Dean. “So, the big one’s the brains of this operation.”

“Why would you tell us this?” Dean demanded. “I mean, the guy basically made you… you. You were one of those  _ things  _ before, right? I’d think you’d be grateful or something.”

“Yeah, it’s spectacular. Every moment a  _ joy.  _ Instead of blissful ignorance, I get to be  _ lucidly  _ kicked around. Crowley do this, Crowley do that, Cowley run a stinking bloody mine full of humans  _ singing  _ all the time.” His voice rose, and the fire in the fireplace rose with it. “I get to be his favorite pincushion as well, since he has more fun with it if you can  _ elucidate exactly  _ what it feels like.” He switched to back to a deadpan when he said, “So yes. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude.” 

“Just how exactly stupid do you think we are?” Dean leaned hard on his elbows. “How are we supposed to trust all this? Why would you wanna help us, anyway?”

“To answer your first question,  _ very _ . To answer the second, _ I don’t care _ . As for the third, if Lucifer thinks you might be inconvenient, then I think you might be useful, although I have to say I’m rapidly reconsidering.”

“What’s your plan, then?” Sam asked. 

“That’s on a need to know basis, and all you need to know is that I’m going to burn your house down in about an hour, tell the boss you weren’t in it, inevitably get sent off to  _ find  _ you because he tends to fixate on things, and then have a whole  _ spate _ of free time in which I get to  _ pretend  _ to look while doing whatever I like.”

“How are we supposed to _ work _ if we’re missing?” Dean asked.

“Here--” Crowley dug a little fabric purse out of his pocket and tossed it on the table. “Stay in the city. Get drunk every day. Buy yourself some working girls, I don’t care, just  _ stay the hell away from that mine.  _ If Lucifer finds you, my search is over, and we can’t have that. _ ” _

“That’s what this is really about!” Dean sat up straight. He punctuated  _ that _ with a slap to the table. “You just want to keep us away from the mine so we can’t tell anyone who you are and what’s really going on down there! You’re on his side, aren’t you?”

“I’m on  _ my  _ side. Where that coincides with other sides is… well… coincidental. And yes, that  _ is  _ a benefit. My plan, benefits me. Truly shocking. Try to remember, if your thick heads can hang onto the information long enough,” Crowley raised his voice and a vein stood out on his forehead. “ _ I was sent here to kill you. _ Trust me, don’t trust me, this house is about to be ashes either way, the only thing you have to decide is if you’re going to be inside... or outside.”

“Well,” Sam said through his teeth, “When you put it that way…”

“I thought you might come around. Just remember, this is a  _ city  _ holiday. I see you outside city limits…” Crowley snapped his fingers, and the fire in the fireplace swelled alarmingly. 

“I don’t like it,” Dean said.  

“You got a better idea?” Sam didn’t take his eyes off Crowley when he spoke.

“Could bury Cas’ knife in him,” Dean said, glaring at Crowley as he spoke of him in the third person. 

“You don’t want to do that, mate,” Crowley said, with an arrogant little smile that made the whole idea all the more tempting to try. “Let’s say you succeed at killing me and get a  _ real _ Lucifer loyalist after you. Then what?”

Dean was quiet. He still didn’t like it, and he didn’t trust the guy as far as he could throw him, but at the same time, what choice did they have?

Before he knew it, they were packed and on the road with a plume of dark smoke rising from the trees where his house had once stood -- the house where he’d spent most of his childhood, and  _ all  _ of Sam’s. It was where Uncle Bobby had kept them safe until it was their turn to do the same for him, for as long as they’d been able, and where all of his old things still took up residence -- things they’d never see again if they left them. 

Neither he nor Sam had sat in Bobby’s chair in the months since they’d lost him. If he was being entirely honest, there were times that Dean would lie in bed at night with his eyes closed, imagining that that chair was still occupied. 

It was where he’d learned to grow some of the precious few things tough enough to survive up here, and then how to cook them.

It was where he’d stood out front and kissed Cas goodbye not a few hours before. 

Gone forever, over some magical royal dick-measuring contest. 

“We’ll build another one,” Sam said, probably reading Dean’s face like one of the books he was now lugging on his back. “When this is all over. Or hey, maybe we… could even stay in the city.”

Dean saw Sam almost wince when he said it, like he was expecting a bad reaction. Once upon a time he might have gotten one, too. All Dean could think about now, though, was Sam as some kind of librarian, or possibly just the guy who really annoys the librarian all the time… Heck, there was a chance he’d feel more useful in town than he ever did breaking rocks in a hole. There were a lot more girls in the city, as well. It’d be good for him.

But what about Dean? All of the sudden, he felt like a caveman. He knew how to catch a fish or a rabbit with whatever was around, could find the right plants to stop a wound festering, could drive off a Goblin or a Goblin-adjacent critter with some folk-song caterwauling, but that didn’t really put him more than a step above most of the wild animals in the forest. 

He wasn’t suited for city life, and he knew it, but he wasn’t about to disappoint Sam by scolding him for the suggestion, especially not  _ now.  _ He had to try and keep his chin up. 

For Sam. 

They finally crossed through the main gate of town just before dawn. Dean hadn’t been in years. It wasn’t like what he remembered -- in his memories, it towered and gleamed. Before him, now, it seemed dingy, disheveled, and small. Was that the change in perspective, or had the city declined along with everything else?

Maybe both? 

Despite having enough in Crowley’s coin purse to enjoy the amenities of a nicer inn, there was no way to know what was coming, or how long they’d need to live on what they had. They were headed for a rougher part of town.

Besides, it was integral to Dean’s backup plan -- if honest work was hard to come by, and he thought it might be, he wasn’t completely averse to the dishonest variety. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


 

The place they found wasn’t much -- one big, dusty, near-empty room above a no-less-dusty tavern. It was so sparsely furnished there wasn’t even a bed, just two thin, lumpy bedrolls they could stretch out on the floor. Obviously it wasn’t a long-term solution, but Dean rather liked the owner: he was an odd sort, not exactly friendly, but clearly too pragmatic and independent to make trouble, and too focused on his own activities to get nosy.

“Don’t much care,” The man said in his odd accent, when Dean started to come up with little lies -- the three of them were supposed to be dead or missing for the moment, depending on who you asked, and as they now knew, Lucifer had lots of spies. “Long as you ain’t causing me too much trouble, your business ain’t none of mine.”

“What if I said it isn’t  _ you _ we’re worried about?” Dean said.

“I’d say that for an extra… oh, say, 20 percent?” The man smiled as he offered, “I could give ya a little  _ security  _ as well. You know, tell a different story ‘bout my new tenants to any person who asks, and let y’all know if and when I get inquiries. Might need to know a little o’ the real stuff first o’course, so I don’t get too close or too far by accident…”

“Wouldn’t a single cover story be easier?” Dean frowned.

“Maybe, but not as safe. You tell everybody somethin’ different, get ‘em arguing amongst ‘emselves, never knowing which bits are the real ones… makes it easier to skedaddle in a hurry if you have to as well. Plus, something gets out, you got an idea who leaked it.”

Dean nodded. The place was a dump, but it was a good deal, and he took it, shaking the guy’s hand. 

“Name’s Benjamin, but most everybody ‘round here calls me Benny. Just got one last little uh… formality… ‘fore I hand over the keys.”

“Formality?” Dean asked. 

The guy went in the back and brought out a small, oddly-shaped parcel wrapped in heavy oilcloth. He put it on the bar and unwrapped it carefully to reveal a hunk of gray-white crystal no bigger than a slice of bread that looked like a badly-included version of what Cas’ blade was made of. One edge had been sharpened. 

“Now, I know this is gonna seem pretty strange, but I’ll do it right along with you, prove I’m not nuts.” Benny picked up the hunk of rock and slid the sharp edge along the flesh of his upper arm until a cut appeared.  

Dean balked. “What the hell?!”

Dean  _ felt  _ the color leave his face. His hands went clammy -- he wasn’t generally that squeamish, he’d patched up any number of wounds, both his own and Sam’s and occasionally those of the guys he worked with, but watching Benny cut into himself made Dean incredibly uncomfortable. 

“See?” Benny said, “Not a Goblin. Your turn.”

“The hell did you just do?” Dean managed to cough out.  

“What did you, just fall of the turnip truck?” Benny laughed as he cleaned up his arm. “Heck, I figured that’s what you meant, about security and all that? Since they can look like us these days?”

“How do  _ you _ know about that?” Dean cringed when he heard how high his voice went.

Benny turned to where there was a saloon-style door leading into a back room that Dean assumed was the kitchen. “Hey!” He hollered, “‘Mon out here!”

A moment or two later, a short woman with frizzy brown hair emerged from the probably-kitchen with a deep scowl, wiping her hands on her apron. Her voice was husky when she said, “What?”

“Dean here wants a demonstration.” Benny shook the sharpened stone in his hand. He turned to Dean and said, “Dean, Meg. Meg, Dean. She ain’t very friendly, but she’s almost as good a cook as I am”

Meg looked Dean in the eye. Her expression didn’t change as she took the stone from Benny and made a tiny cut over the muscle near her elbow. It was much smaller than the one Benny had made on himself, no worse than one of Sam’s paper cuts, but she hissed in pain and Dean watched as blackish lines spidered across her skin out from the cut, like cracks in the ice on a lake. 

“She payin’ you for security too?” Dean asked. 

“I’m working for it, thanks,” Meg deadpanned. She glanced at Benny. “Besides, you’ve seen all those critters running around the woods at night. We might be one of the bigger, badder things that came through that gate, but we’re not alone.”

“How are you supposed to keep us safe from Goblins when you got one working in your kitchen?” Dean complained.

“I don’t like them any more than you do.” She cut in and spoke for herself again, and Benny allowed it. “ _ King Michael  _ isn’t exactly my favorite person  _ either _ , but once he gets his way and the mine’s all flooded, either he’s gonna make burnt toast out of our  _ fearless leader  _ or the other way around. Either way, I get to--”

The rest was covered by a high pitched whine coming from somewhere inside Dean’s own ears. 

Once the mine was  _ what? _

  
  
  


* * *

 

 

Dean walked to the window of the shared space, and looked out for the twelfth time. The view through the dirty glass was exactly as it had been the previous eleven times: a static image from a corner, where the main road was parallel to Dean’s view, on the left hand side, and a narrow alleyway was out front. If he turned his head to the right, he could see down it. 

Across the way was another dirty limewashed building not unlike the one they were in, and beside it, a taller house made of bricks. Dean could see the corner of birds nests in the eaves, but had no idea what sort of birds they might belong to. 

He turned away from the window and walked to the other end of the room, where the staircase came right up into the space without so much as a door or a hall. 

“Dean.” Sam put down the book he was reading. “You’re pacing.”

“Damn right I’m pacing,” Dean said, though he hadn’t realized it until Sam said so. “Why the hell aren’t  _ you  _ pacing?”

Sam held up the book. “Can’t pace and read at the same time.”

“You really think you’re gonna find something in there we can use?”

“It’s more likely than if I was wearing holes in the floor,” Sam sniped. “Look, people used to have ways of blocking Thaumaturge magic, or weakening it, at least briefly -- and briefly is all we really need. Maybe a few hours, until the worst of the first storm passes. First one’s always the worst, right?”

“Right,” Dean said, though there wasn’t much conviction in it. Every year the pattern was the same -- late fall, right before winter, there’d be a week or two of heavy rain. The mines had channels carefully dug out and built to redirect surges of water, to carve the paths it could take to the far, strange caverns where it went. 

Hairs prickled on the back of Dean’s neck. How new was that dam he’d seen? Would that change the balance this year?

It was a bad time for it. After the cave-in, it was the first year in twenty that they’d be working with untested construction. The last time this had happened, they’d simply stopped work until they knew it everything was secure, but demand was higher these days, and the product harder and slower to deliver. 

Crowley didn’t exactly make the most understanding foreman, either. He didn’t know the guys, didn’t care about them, and made it clear he didn’t have any interest in doing either. Only now did Dean finally know why. He could just hear him now.  _ If you lazy louts did a poor job of rebuilding the channels, that’s your bed, so lie in it. You work when you’re told, or you’re not welcome back.  _

What would he do if everyone just walked off the job? Scoop up some Goblins to work for him? Or just offer up an irresistible wage that he’d never have to pay when everyone drowned?

“Hey Dean--” Sam called, and then paused a second, waiting for Dean to come back from the places he’d gone in his mind. “I think I’ve got something, but…”

Sam, the hero, Dean thought, as excitement rose in his chest at the prospect that they might have a chance. “But?”

“But I don’t think we can do it without an actual Thaumaturge,” Sam said. 

“You mean we need Cas.” 

“Well, he’s the only one who has much chance of being on board, but…” Sam looked out the window. The castle wasn’t visible from it, but the direction was roughly correct. “I don’t know, Dean, he walked off, we haven’t heard from him… 

“Then we go get him,” Dean said, resolute. 

“What?”

“If we haven’t heard anything, either he’s holed up in that castle by his own free will, or he’s being held there, right? That’s what he said was gonna happen.”

Sam didn’t need to say  _ that, or they killed him,  _ because Dean could read it on his face. If that was the case, they were probably screwed anyway, so there was no point entertaining the idea. 

Dean pressed on: “Listen, I know it sounds crazy, but what if this is our only shot? You said it yourself. We need him. Besides, he came to rescue us on the  _ longest  _ of long shots. What if  _ he _ needs rescuing?”

“What if he doesn’t? What if he ran away, Dean? He could be halfway to the sea by now.”

“No, no,” Dean convinced himself, “He’s following that thread thing, right? He wouldn’t just run off now.”

“What about Crowley?”

“Screw him! He can’t have eyes everywhere. We just don’t get caught.”

Sam’s gaze darted around the room. He took in a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh that Dean recognized as resigned acceptance that Dean was right, which, of course he was. 

“Alright!” Dean said, “Let’s go rescue ourselves a prince!”

  
  
  


* * *

 

 

Dean was dead. 

Castiel stood in the damp grass in front of what was left of the little house. Whoever destroyed it did an incredibly thorough job. A drizzle had recently fallen and there were still thin, white clouds churning through the sky in numbers sufficient to block any blue from showing through. 

He was back the same commoner-beige cloak he’d worn the first time he’d run off, and when he’d gone to find Dean. It was long enough to pick up dirt from the ground, and the oversized hood that extended well beyond his face, in order not to be recognized as he walked. He was doubly glad of it now. All he had to do was turn slightly away from Crowley to no longer need to arrange his face in any particular configuration for social reasons.

Turnip’s claws dug into the thick material at his shoulder. He extended his arm to let her walk down to his elbow and take off from there with a soft, cautious  _ caw.  _

Not that Crowley would likely care in any case.

“ _ You _ don’t seem upset, not even to lose two workers,” Castiel pointed out.

“Goblin, remember? Your _brother_ might have made me _look_ like a human, but it’s just window dressing. Not so different from you, really. Anyway, there’s more people to swing a pick where they came from.” Crowley paused. “Honestly, I don’t get it. You’re literally a _magical_ _prince._ There’s no limit to the strapping young lads who’d be thrilled to warm your bed. What’s so special about this one?”

There was a coursing, spiking feeling in Castiel’s blood. Energy --power-- welled up and eddied, but he closed his eyes and focused on letting it uncoil. It was finite, not to be wasted, and besides, if he was going to kill Crowley, he could just stab him. The thought brought him a brief flicker of amusement. 

“Let me guess, not helping,” Crowley said.

“No.”

He approached the debris. Stacked stones formed the uneven remains of the foundation. These were largely covered by damp fragments of blackened wood. A few of the less-burnable objects stood out, and Castiel plucked through it all, only realizing after he’d started that he was looking for some kind of personal belonging, a traveler in search of the perfect souvenir. 

It was strange that he had such a hard time finding one. 

This wasn’t the work of bandits or thieves. Sam and Dean would be able to defend themselves, or escape, and thieves wouldn’t go to the trouble of this kind of destruction. 

The prospect that it was random was simply too remote. 

“Lucifer?” Castiel muttered the question mostly to himself. “Goblins?”

Castiel had spent his whole life hearing of the merciless whimsy of Michael’s twin. It wasn’t out of the question, but if he wanted Castiel to join him, this would be an odd way of demonstrating that. 

Michael…  _ he  _ couldn’t have done this, could he?

Even now, it was hard to reconcile the Michael Castiel had been brought up to trust with the one that had lied to everyone and nailed Castiel to a piece of wood.  _ That  _ Michael was more than capable of burning down a miner’s house in a fit of paranoia. He’d lied. It’d all been lies. At least Lucifer had told him the truth, or so it seemed. 

_ He knows everything,  _ Naomi had said. 

“There’s nothing here,” Castiel said. “Isn’t that strange?”

“They didn’t have much, did they?” Crowley reasoned breezily. “Maybe it was all flammable.”

That, Castiel knew, wasn’t true: Dean had the Thaumaturge dagger.  _ That _ wouldn’t burn, not if you threw it into the hottest flame on Earth, but if this was done on behalf of Michael or Lucifer, it wouldn’t matter, either one’s agents would readily take it if they found it. 

Still, there really was  _ nothing,  _ a sheer lack of valuables or worthwhile items, except for a few large, unwieldy things that would be impossible to carry. The image that coalesced around that fact was a flint-strike of hope. The resulting flame was minuscule and seemingly weak, but no matter how Castiel tried to stamp it out, it wouldn’t quite die. 

Better to be thorough, he thought, just in case, and he flipped over the remains of an iron frame of some kind, to see underneath. 

“He knows that you hate him,” Castiel said, without looking up. 

“I know,” Crowley answered. 

“He thinks you don’t know he knows.”

“Does he? Or is that just what he said to you?” Crowley huffed. “I imagine he finds it all very entertaining.”

“Must be difficult,” Castiel said. “He said he… smells like the gate. That’s why you all listen to him.”

“Smells… that’s a funny way of putting it. That’s why the peons listen, yeah,” Crowley answered, eyes narrowed, like he was trying to see where Castiel was going with this. “They haven’t got much choice.”

“But not you.”

“I’m... ascended,” Crowley said with a sarcastic grandness, as if that explained everything. 

“How does that work, exactly?” Castiel picked up a deformed piece of metal and tried to figure out what it came from. 

“Well, he triggers the process, but he’s not as important as he thinks he is. It continues on its own. Like poking a hole in a dam. The water flowing through erodes the stone on its own, eventually. At a certain point one has the self-control to put a lampshade on that pesky light, let’s say. You’ve got a bit of a glow, yourself. Different, though. I guess it’s filtered through the…” Crowley gestured generally toward Castiel. 

“That... effect, is that why you hate him?” Castiel turned over a foundation stone in his hands. 

“I hate him because he hates me. Hates all of us, no different than Michael does, or you do. Can’t live with us, can’t live without us.” Crowley spoke coolly, but something hitched -- Castiel heard it. 

“Can’t live without you? Why? Because you’re his army?” He pressed. 

“Think about it,” Crowley urged. “He gave you power. He  _ gave  _ it to you, just for a few minutes of your time.”

“You won’t convince me that I should side with him,” Castiel cautioned.

“No, no, I mean, if he had a  _ finite _ amount of power, do you think he’d be handing it out? No matter what he wanted?” Crowley led. “Does that sound like him?”

“You’re saying he’s getting more power somewhere,” Castiel followed. “From... the Goblins?”

Crowley’s hand shot forward to snatch Castiel’s and he smacked it against his own throat. It was a move startling enough that rather than throttle him, Castiel nearly jerked his arm away, but--

He felt it. 

It was small. Not the raging tidal wave of power that Lucifer had wielded, just a rivulet, but unmistakable. 

“It’s in you,” Castiel realized out loud. “The gate, it’s… I thought he destroyed it.”

“He told the truth. Gate’s gone. It just turns out it doesn’t matter,” Crowley said, stepping away from Castiel’s touch. “Every Goblin… we’re all just a lot of little itty bitty gates, bringing through little droplets of power for him to lap up. But you know what a lot of little droplets do?”

_ The water flowing through erodes the stone,  _ Crowley had said. Was this what he meant? Was he just going to get more powerful, as long as he was alive? 

Was  _ every  _ Goblin that Lucifer had touched going to?

The idea was dizzying, terrifying, and absolutely made Castiel very tempted to cut Crowley down where he stood. 

All at once, Castiel understood: Why and how Lucifer was “raising” Goblins from feral madness, and why he was so confident. Why Michael was willing to destroy the  _ entire economy _ of the kingdom he was meant to protect in service of a seemingly-mad goal. 

Why he needed Hannah’s help, why he  _ had  _ to find another way.

Why there was no choice but to go back to the castle, no matter how stupid it sounded given that he’d just gotten  _ out  _ of there, and no matter how frightening or doomed it was. He had to try.  

Michael must have known all along.

A lot of droplets made a flood.  

 


	9. Every Moment's Duty

Dean’s nose itched, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He was bound to the leg of a colossal dining table covered in the wreckage of a feast -- someone had clearly taken out considerable anger on a perfectly innocent meal. 

In retrospect, it was surprising that Dean and Sam had made it as far as they did. 

“Sammy?” Dean twisted in his restraints. “You okay?”

“Can’t talk, Dean,” Sam quipped dryly, his voice strained in a way that made Dean feel deeply, desperately guilty for getting him into this situation at all, “little _ tied up  _ right now.”

Sam had proven handier than Dean expected with Cas’ knife, which had been enough to save them from a run-in with a couple of Goblins, but one of them got away -- no doubt reporting to Crowley or Lucifer or both.  

How fast could a Goblin run? 

They hadn’t had much time to contemplate the matter before _ human  _ soldiers acting on  _ Michael’s _ orders, had proved a more pressing concern. 

How exactly had they managed to get on the to-ruin list for both sides of this mess?

Something was clearly wrong in the castle, that much was clear -- The last time Dean was here, staff had scurried everywhere in a hive of activity, and the place was spotless, but this time, as he was being dragged kicking and screaming (and taking their aggression and attention from a slightly more compliant Sam) from one area to the next, he’d noticed a strange silence, like the place was half-abandoned. Whole rooms were wrecked as well: furniture overturned, windows smashed, paintings scorched, rugs torn...

Someone was mad, someone powerful, and Dean was pretty sure he knew who. 

Two guards had been left in charge of them, a substantial decrease from the eight or so Dean was pleased to have required to get them restrained in the first place. He watched them confer in hushed tones, and then one of them walked off, shouting in an officious sort of way as if someone down the hall had started causing trouble.

Dean strained against the ropes, but none of the shards of glass on the floor were in range. There were plenty of pieces of broken goblets and gravy boats and display trays all over the tabletop, but he was too far underneath to reach. His first thought was if he could jar the table, maybe a piece would fall off, but no matter how he wriggled, he couldn’t get his legs underneath him enough to get any leverage. 

He needed someone else to put something sharp in range.

“Hey!” Dean shouted at the already-agitated guard. “What ever happened to a dungeon cell, huh? Not much in the way of hospitality, huh?”

“Dean?!” Sam sounded alarmed. “How about shutting up?”

The guard crossed the carpet to where Dean was tied, sitting half-under the table. He crouched noisily in his armor. Through the slit in his helmet, he regarded Dean, and Dean regarded him back. 

“Must be hot in there. You so scared of a couple of tied-up guys you gotta wear that thing?” Dean teased. “Or is the problem that your face is too ugly?” 

The guard started to pull back his arm for the hit, but there was no way he’d be able to get a good angle, not like this, not with the top of the table providing cover. Even a kick would be weak. Dean mustered a defiant smirk when they realized this at the same time.

There wasn’t much space under the table, and this stooge didn’t want to get close. That was what Dean was counting on. He took a step around, crunching small pieces of dishes and decorations under his boots, before he found an nice big piece -- easily more than half of a a broken glass jug. 

He stopped in front of it. 

Dean was readying another childish insult but the guy was apparently delicate enough, or enough of an asshole, to go for it without the extra help. There was a scraping noise and the guy’s helmet fell to the ground. He drew his leg back, aiming right at Dean’s spot under the table. 

“Sam! Eyes!” Dean called as he flinched. 

To the guard’s credit, his aim was at least moderately true: the already-broken jug shattered into more pieces in Dean’s general direction. It was less effectual than either of them expected, and as an upshot?

He had something sharp much closer now. 

“What the--” The guard’s muffled voice said, right before a clatter of metal and leather. Dean opened his eyes just in time for the guy to make a familiar choked noise as his head hit the corner of the table with some force, and then his body hit the ground. 

It was familiar, only because Dean had seen guys faint tons of times down underground. Most of them were only out for a second or two, but Dean counted, and this guy seemed to be properly unconscious.

Probably not good news for him, but there wasn’t a lot of time to think about that.

“Dean? Dean!” Sam had been tied facing the other direction. He’d be seeing whatever the soldier had just seen. The question escaped him all at once, and not to Dean. “What did you do to the guard?”

He heard Sam scrabbling as if to try and back up, but his back was already against the table leg, there was nowhere to go. 

Then he stopped. 

“What is it?” Dean asked urgently. “What do you see?”

“Uh--” Sam’s voice dropped to a whisper. “She wants me to be quiet.”

“She?” Dean frowned and whispered back reflexively. 

“Yeah, it’s… definitely a she… but…”

“But?”

But Dean saw for himself quickly enough. The feet that came around the table were different from the guard’s in almost every way possible. Rather than heavy and booted, they were bare, white, and soft, their tops brushed by the hem of a long dress. Their movements were jerky and strange, appearing and flickering and moving from place to place without transition like the points of a fire. 

They were also walking silently, about three inches _ above _ the ground. The feet passed through the doorway the guard had been… well,  _ guarding _ ... and vanished around the corner. 

“You saw that too, right?” Sam said quietly.

“Did you see what she looked like?” Dean asked, starting to work away at the ropes with a piece of glass, “I mean, other than below the knee?”

“Uh… This is gonna sound weird, but…”

“But?” Dean said again.

“Kind of like Cas,” Sam said. 

“Like Cas? How?” Escape was a process of trial and error. Dean’s arms and wrists were already sliced and scraped and rope-burned pretty badly. He winced through each movement as he sawed away with his chunk of broken glass. 

“I don’t know, she looked like she could be his sister or something.”

“The  _ dead  _ sister!” Dean hissed. “The one he kept talking about!” 

To get the necessary pressure, he had to press in with the heel of his hand, and even the dull side wasn’t that dull.  Just as he started to worry about how blood-slick the glass was getting, the rope finally snapped. 

“You mean Hannah?” Sam asked. Of course he’d know the na--

The feet were back.

Dean hadn’t seen them come back. There was no turn around the corner, no appearance, just.... There they were, like Sam had called her by saying her name, and who the fuck knew at this point, maybe he had. Dean twisted around and crawled under the table to free Sam as quick as he could. 

Sam rubbed his wrists and shot an alarmed glance at Dean’s bloodied hands and arms, but said nothing. Dean gestured at Sam’s side of the table -- the one without any ghost feet. They scrambled out, but there she was, in front of them all of the sudden. 

Sam’d been right. She  _ did  _ look like Cas. The little crook of her head and narrowing of her eyes when she regarded them, the way her hair was just a shade lighter than Cas’, and had that same not-a-fan-of-hairbrushes look to it. 

“You’re her, aren’t you?” Dean asked. “Hannah. Cas told me about you. Told me you were smart. We’re here for him, to help him.”

A look of questioning surprise crossed her face, which turned almost immediately into tight-lipped mirth. When she tried to laugh, though, and no sound came out, her features darkened. The frown, in particular, complete with the little line between her brows, was so much like Cas it made Dean’s chest ache. 

She gave an equally silent sigh and beckoned them to follow. 

It turned out she was a hell of an asset in creeping around the place. She tended to flicker in and out, and disappear and reappear in strange places, but if they were patient, she seemed find a way to distract everyone in their path and clear a way up a series of staircases, across a mezzanine that was exposed enough to make Dean’s heart patter in his chest, and to the far end of a long corridor. 

Hannah vanished, then.

Dean pressed his back against the wall next to the arched door, and signaled for Sam to do the same. He stretched one arm out and gave the door a push so it would swing away. 

No one, nothing. 

He dared to look into the room. There was truly no one there, save for a crow, head tucked beneath her wing, napping on a shelf by the open window. Her feathers were fluffed up just a little, and Dean could see them shift minutely with her even breaths.

This room -- a bedchamber --  had somehow been spared, it seemed. The gray morning had broken at some point, but it was hard to tell. With the heavy cloud cover, it wasn’t so much a sunrise, more of a “less dark.” The rain had started overnight and was really picking up now, the spatter against the glass the only sound. It smelled like linen and warm wood. 

The overall effect was a reprieve from the chilly, alien atmosphere of the rest of the castle, as if time had been frozen here, or maybe it was the only place time  _ hadn’t  _ frozen. The only sign that anything was even slightly amiss was a tapestry, removed from the wall and piled on the floor. 

“Dean, look,” Sam’s attention was drawn to what would turn out to be exactly the right place. He took maybe one and a half strides (Dean would never get over how tall Sam had ended up) to where the tapestry had almost certainly been hanging. On the wall was etched a feather, and when they approached, it lit up slightly, with a pale blue glow.

The crow on the windowsill caught Dean’s peripheral vision. She had woken and was stretching fluidly, her wings arcing out to their full length, and then angling forward and back as if experimentally. She hopped from the window with a little flutter, and then jumped, wings buffeting the air in the room as she cushioned her landing, to stand in front of the tapestry.

“I know that bird…” Dean explained, but trailed off, watching. He caught Sam watching too, as if they both  _ sensed _ she was going to do something important, or maybe just because she was the only lead. 

The door in the wall opened before her, and she vanished into the dark that matched her. Dean and Sam followed after. 

They finally emerged from the stumbling, cluttered darkness into the bright light of a belltower that didn’t match the rest of the castle at all, not even the already-incongruous room they’d come from. It was somehow clad in white stone and beechwood and ringed with thin window after thin window, that seemed to stretch above them as far as they could make out.

Their little ebony guide was nowhere to be seen. 

The bell above Dean’s head was colossal, bigger than any he’d ever even  _ heard  _ of. It wasn’t a tarnished bronze, but rather the white-silver of something pure and precious. Something in him wanted badly to hear it ring, but at that size, so close, he wasn’t sure he’d survive it.

Maybe that would be alright, he thought for a moment, transfixed. 

A harsh ripple of goosebumps told Dean right away that he was dealing with magic. It was the same feeling he’d had being close to Cas after he’d been powered up, something like static cling, or the moment a fever breaks. 

“It’s beautiful,” Sam said, clearly feeling it too - Dean could hear it in his voice, could see it in the way he moved ahead to explore the space. He looked around, and then turned back with a frown. “We aren’t in the castle anymore, are we?”

“I don’t either. Just Hannah, is fine.” Hannah said from behind, causing Dean to whip around. Here, her feet rested on the ground. Her cadence was like Cas’ too - that pragmatic sound of words carefully chosen. 

Dean looked at Sam, and they shared their concern. 

“You are there, and you’re not there,” she said, oddly.

“Are you a… ghost? Or…” Dean wasn’t sure if this was an insensitive question. 

“I can tell you that much,” she said, as if having a completely different conversation. “You called him  _ Cas _ … I like that.”

Hannah stopped in front of Dean, and gathered his hands into hers. She closed her eyes, and Dean followed suit instinctively, like he’d heard a command she didn’t actually speak out loud. When he opened them again, she was gone, standing by the window instead.

His hands and arms were healed and clean, as if nothing had happened to them. He touched one hand with the other, and realized that one of them was clutching something: a thin band set with a rounded stone the color of a robin’s egg, or a little bluer than that. 

“Thank you,” Sam said for him, with a scolding look to Dean, “Cas doesn’t seem to care much about titles, I was wondering what we should call-- _ oh _ .”

“I don’t either. Just Hannah, is fine. Ah! Here I am.” Her image rippled slightly, like something seen through the surface of a lake, but then solidified. She looked down at herself like someone trying on a garment, unsure of the fit. “You know, when I was alive, time seemed so simple, like walking down a hallway.”

“You did pretty good back there in the castle,” Dean pointed out.

“Practice,” she explained. “A lot of practice. I did that sequence… probably about five hundred times, before the right starting point. I knew it would be important.”

“What _ is  _ time like?” Sam asked softly, taking a step toward her. 

Hannah looked at the floor, from one thin plank to another, as if using her gaze to gather up small objects. “Music, I suppose. The notes have an order, a scale, do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti... but that isn’t how we hear them, usually. What I am doesn’t have a name, I don’t think. I’m a piece that fell out of time… or rather, was dropped. The rest of me wanted so much to help my brother. I was worried about him. Twinned Thaumaturges who are separated, especially by death, don’t usually fare well, after, at least that’s what they say. I had to protect him. You… know the feeling, I think.”

Dean took one step forward, and suddenly he was face to face with her again, like the space had moved around him. 

“Give him that,” she said, glancing down at the ring she’d handed him before. “I wanted to give it to Castiel. I wanted to see him again. He’s going to be in trouble. Our moments pass but do not meet.”

“This is the thread thing,” Dean said. 

Hannah smiled brightly. “Yes.” Then, in response to Dean’s look of confusion, “I took it, from Michael. Or I will take it. Not sure.”

She turned suddenly, as if someone had called her name, and was gone.

They hardly had a moment to contemplate that before the door flew open hard enough to hit the wall, and Cas came out of the darkness. 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Castiel whipped around and closed the door behind him, and his eyes leapt around the space looking for something -- a heavy piece of furniture, perhaps, that he could use to block it from opening again. 

He processed the fact that there was no such thing present first, before realized that the sheer improbability of the current situation stretched beyond Hannah and her absence, all the way to Dean and Sam sitting against the curved wall on the right side of the room. 

Dean and Sam. 

For a moment, everything linked up -- Hannah had been here, and she was dead. They were dead. They were… whatever Hannah was, trapped like she was.

His logical mind caught up. No, they wouldn’t be here, in any case. Right? They’d be in the woods, where they died. Or was this some other type of place? Castiel couldn’t decide if they were alive or dead, and were they saying something?

“Dean. Sam. How--” Dean had sprung to his feet before Castiel could even start his half-breathless sentence, and he only got three words in before he was being pulled into a hug which, the moment their bodies parted again, turned into a kiss that almost knocked him off his feet.

He returned it and, clung to it for a brief moment, almost overwhelmed with celebration, and more than a little bewildered. Seeing Dean after thinking he was dead was something of a revelation as to how hard he’d managed to fall, and how quickly, a thing he thought only happened in stories. 

Given Dean’s reaction to seeing  _ him,  _ he didn’t think it was out of the question that the sentiment was mutual. 

“Hope it’s okay if I just say hi,” Sam joked dryly, though the angles of his face were softened by a good-humored smile. Castiel had already observed that it seemed to pleasantly amuse Sam when Dean was effusive, and this moment was no exception. 

“What are you doing here?” The words spilled out of Castiel’s mouth. “How are you alive? Where’s Hannah?”

“Good to see you, too,” Dean said. 

Sam came to the rescue. “We… thought we were rescuing  _ you _ . After what you said…”

“I got out,” Castiel said, obvious as it was, “Or, rather, Naomi and Anna got me out. Michael’s gone mad, exactly as I predicted.”

“We heard,” Sam said. “That’s why we came.” Then, in response to Castiel’s frown, he added: “Seems like the city runs on castle gossip. It was news to us, too.”

It took a certain amount of back-and-forth before all three of them had the information they needed to work with. Castiel understood what Sam explained -- the method he’d found of cutting off all magic. It wouldn’t be difficult to do, if no one was bothering them, but the timing would be critical. It would only last a short while. If they wanted more than a moment’s safety, both for themselves and for the kingdom, they’d have to  _ do something _ with that time. 

There wasn’t much to prepare, but they made the most of what they had.

“So, what now?” Sam asked. 

“Now,” Dean had a slow, casual smile. “We follow the thread.” He plucked Castiel’s hand from where it rested at his side, and into his palm, Dean deposited the very thing that Castiel came for. “Right, Cas?”

Putting it on was an incredible relief. He nodded. “Right.”

They’d have to be careful, but the thread would lead them right, at least in the long run, no matter how roundabout the path. 

It led them down. 

Down out of the belltower, down the spiral stairs, down past the mezzanine, down through an expansive hall strewn with collapsed bodies that none of them spent too long looking at. 

There was an intense awareness that ran like the thread itself among all three of them of what they were truly avoiding. It would be bad if they ran across any of the scant guards, but Castiel had seen precious few on his way to the belltower, and it was nothing the three of them couldn’t handle as long as there weren’t reinforcements. 

No, it was Michael himself they had to be wary of. somehow the thread itself must have known, because the path it made was full of back stairs and abandoned staff corridors. Eventually, the walls turned from plastered and painted, to bare gray bricks, and as they got belowground, to a mixture of chaotically stacked stone and, in some places, bare earth. 

Castiel had seen this place in Naomi’s memories, and the smell of it seemed to bring back something for himself as well. It wasn’t anything clear, just a sense of misery and anxiety. 

The thread had never been  _ taut _ before, not like this. 

In the past, when he’d been able to see the thread at all rather than merely feeling it, when he’d caught its flickering reflection, it had dangled slightly from the ring. It would weave its way loosely, curvingly through the air in front of him, in much the same way a fishing line might look if dropped on the floor. Now, in the glow from the dim oil sconces along the walls, it formed a straight and urgent line, pulled so tight it tugged on Castiel’s hand. 

He took the only message he  _ could  _ take, which was:  _ hurry up.  _

Castiel took point all the way down ramps and up slanted passageways, and up and down crude and uneven steps almost as steep as ladders, that had to be navigated in reverse.  

How far beneath the castle were they now? The levels were so uneven, and their path had been so odd, there was no trusting his own sense of things. It could be much shallower than his fitful mind was suggesting, or deeper. He could tell why Naomi had been so anxious, why she’d never come down here despite knowing it was there. Some of the areas seemed so far in disrepair, it was a wonder the castle atop them was still standing. 

He kept a neutral expression whenever he looked back at his companions. They were likely worried enough as it was. 

Castiel kept his index finger curled out of the way, and middle finger and thumb around the thread, so that when the shifting shadows dropped it out of sight, he could still feel it. That was how he knew when it turned sharply and seemed to pass right through a door. 

He touched the wood, and then pulled his hand away as if it was hot. 

“There’s something… strong magic, on the other side of this door,” he explained.

“Is it safe?” Dean asked.

“It is almost certainly not safe,” Castiel answered. 

“Well?” said Sam, “Not like standing here is going to help. You ready?”

Castiel positioned his body carefully between where the crack would appear in the door, and Dean and Sam behind him. If anything were to come flying out, magical or otherwise, he wanted it to hit him first. 

Nothing did -- nothing but light. 

The room beyond the door was fairly large, at least the size of one of the larger bedchambers upstairs, and by far one of the larger rooms they’d seen belowground. It took the shape of a loose circle with a high, vaulted ceiling, and every wall was lined with shelves.

On every shelf, little glass balls full of whitish light. 

Under every ball, a little indented plate to hold it in place, the metal stamped with a name. 

“Cas?” Someone said from far away, somewhere past the rush of blood past his ringing ears. 

There would be no time, he thought faintly, to do Sam’s spell, because the second he saw Michael, he was going to  _ kill him.  _ He would pay for this. He would pay for everything. 

“Cas! Hey!” 

He almost punched Dean right in the face, but Dean’s hands on his shoulders were grounding. Castiel fixated on the pressure, and on Dean’s face. 

“Talk to me, man,” Dean said, never letting their gaze break. 

“He could have saved her.” Castiel’s jaw tightened around the words. “He could have saved Hannah.”

“What  _ is  _ all this?” Sam asked, clearly tempted to touch one but wisely thinking better of it. 

Castiel had to focus just to get all the words to come out in order. “Do you see the names? They’re almost  _ every  _ Thaumaturge who ever lived -- and died.”

“It’s their power,” Dean realized. 

Sam asked, “How could he get that? Wouldn’t he have to be there when they died, or shortly afterward? And that’s assuming they even had that much left at the time…”

“Yes. He would… or one of his agents would. Or he’d have to--” Castiel choked on the words that were about to come out, as he came to where Naomi’s name was written. Hannah’s. Anna’s.

His own.

“Now I see.”

“What?” Dean nudged. 

“He took it from us before we even  _ knew _ ,” Castiel knew his voice was shaking. “He took it when we were delivered to the castle, when we were  _ babies,  _ and told us it didn’t exist. I wonder, how many of these did he collect like a vulture on a corpse, and how many like a snake in a bird’s nest?”

_ He could have saved her. _

Castiel’s face seemed to seize hotly, and he could hardly breathe. There was only one thing he could think: Hannah didn’t need to die. Michael  _ let _ her die. It would have been so easy, it would have cost him so little, surely he could have come up with some other lie to defend the first, he could have done something, if he hadn’t cared only for himself, and the future of his frankly undeserved revenge against Lucifer. So single-minded, he killed his own sister. 

_ He killed her.  _

It was like a drumbeat in his head.  _ He killed her, he killed her, he killed her. _

His legs gave up beneath him and he let himself sink to the floor. He reached out almost without realizing, and before he knew it, he was holding the little glass container for Hannah’s power -- now useless to her -- in the palm of his tingling hand. It was so small, no bigger than a large grape. He pressed his free hand to his face and it came away wet. 

He became aware of a shape in his peripheral vision. Sam, crouching next to him just inside of arm’s reach and putting a hand softly on his shoulder. “Cas… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

How to destroy him? That was the next step, surely. Destroy Michael.  Not with power -- no, that was too easy. He’d follow the plan, and the moment Michael was powerless, the moment they were all powerless… there would be no capture. It was too risky. There was too much chance he would turn the tables somehow. 

Castiel would simply kill him, with his own hands, no matter what it took to do so. 

In the quiet that followed Sam’s distant sympathy, there was a noise, no… two noises. In one direction, something rhythmic like an _ actual  _ drum, but shallower. In the other, a rushing sort of sound, constant but constantly shifting, like a river flowing around an outcropping of rock, or hitting the wall of a dam. 

Sam and Dean must have heard them too, because Castiel saw them exchange a single look, and Sam went after one and Dean went after the other. 

In one direction, Sam was pulling rotted, weak wood out of a corner of the only bare section of wall, and away from the floor. Castiel dragged himself to his feet and, feeling as though piloting his body from a great distance away, brought himself to what was revealed: a hole, leading out of the wall, and a long dirt-and-rock tunnel beyond it. 

The moment the tunnel was exposed, the rushing noise got louder. Somewhere down there, water was flowing. 

They didn’t have a lot of time to consider this, as Dean, who’d poked his head out of the room, brought it back in and pressed his back against the door. 

“Guys? We’ve got company.” Dean said. His eyes were wide, the whites exposed. 

Sam sprang into action, much to his credit: he pulled apart two of the planks that had been covering the dug-out tunnel, giving himself the dubious but potentially effective weapon of a long piece of wood with a couple of nails sticking out of one end. 

Castiel had little choice to but to contain his rage and his grief, to shove it down and step on the trunk it was stored in until it was under enough control to deal with whoever or whatever was about to come through that door. 

The problem was that deep in his heart, whether due to some evidence not registered in his verbal mind, or some magical connection, or some other reason -- he knew  _ exactly  _ who it was going to be, and with every beat, that recognition thumped like a boot on the box of those feelings. 

As the door opened, he grabbed Dean and shoved him roughly (there was no time for gentleness) to the far side of the room, so that he could put his body between both of them and the door. 

Michael was  _ his  _ brother, and he wasn’t going to let anyone else he loved become a victim. 

There was no explosiveness in the way that Michael moved. He entered the room with an oxymoronic  _ practiced casualness _ \-- the fluid movement of someone without a single doubt. His eyes darted to the now-exposed tunnel against the far wall, and then to Sam and to Dean, who stood next to it. When his gaze finally settled on Castiel, the implication was clear: 

He thought they’d come from the tunnel. 

From underground. 

From Lucifer.

Of course -- he  _ would  _ think that. It wouldn’t even occur to him that they’d come through the castle, would it? That such a thing was even possible. He couldn’t conceive of the help they’d had -- they had Hannah, they had the thread, they had one another. It would be so alien to Michael that that could be  _ enough  _ to get them this far… it was so far from his world he couldn’t even conceive of it. 

That thought, that _knowledge,_ that he knew something Michael couldn’t begin to know, steadied Castiel in a way that nothing else since they’d entered this awful place could do. It was almost enough to make him smile. Almost. 

Naomi slipping through the door behind him, though… that threw Castiel for a moment. He glanced to her, but trying to make eye contact was like picking up a wriggling fish.  

“You know,” Michael spoke, his face neutrally thoughtful, his words commandingly slow. Carelessly calm footsteps floated him closer to the shelves. “I’m glad that you’re here. All of you, I suppose -- but Castiel, you especially.”

Castiel didn’t bother to speak. Michael was enjoying listening to himself, and Castiel wasn’t about to get in the way of it. He wasn’t so different from Lucifer, was he? Twins never were. He could feel the tension behind him from Sam and Dean. He knew if he turned, he’d see the both of them coiled like springs, like predators ready to pounce, waiting for an opening. 

Michael went on, because of course he did. “I was going to do this upstairs. I was just now preparing, in fact.”

“Do what?” Castiel stalled. 

“Don’t play games,” Michael wasn’t having it. “I know you don’t understand. I know he  _ poisoned  _ you. What I don’t know, Castiel, is  _ when? _ Did he reach you as a child? Or is this new? Has he been in your mind all this time, as he has mine?”

Castiel said nothing, and just let him wonder. He had figured Sam would follow his lead, but he was particularly relieved when Dean did as well. He eyed Naomi, who simply stood behind Michael, as silent and unreadable as ever.

“When he’s gone, _ if  _ you survive this, I’ll try to rehabilitate you,” Michael suggested. “You will see, Castiel. Every lie has had a purpose. I am not an evil man. For now, though…”

Michael raised one arm above his head, and half-sphere appeared around him. Castiel had only ever heard stories, he didn’t know what it would look like. Was this it? Was he doing the spell now?

“Cas, now!” Dean called from behind him. “Do it now!”

Dean seemed convinced.

Castiel remembered, all at once, a day of hard study from when he was a child. It had been rainy, just like this day, and he was learning of some historical figure, some great man. It would have been no different from any other lesson, but for Hannah and her reaction. 

It was almost like a young girl’s first crush -- but intellectual, rather than physical, and instead of some hero, she’d fallen for a thinker, a writer, from long before her time. There’d been a particular turn of phrase that had snagged her attention, that she’d wrapped around herself like a blanket, and held out in front of herself ever after, a guiding lamp in a fog. 

_ No man can order his life, for it comes flowing over him from behind… the one secret of life and development is not to devise and plan, but fall in with the forces at work -- to do every moment’s duty aright.  _

It didn’t seem like her, to love such an idea. She was so cautious, but then, maybe that was the allure?

He saw it now, in the the depths of his trouble. She’d shown him, the moment she’d given him the thread to trust and follow from moment to moment. Dean too, had demonstrated it: though he had likely never read of the speaker, he broadcast the fact of his fundamental agreement with the sentiment with every move he made, just as he was doing now. 

Castiel triggered the block. He did this moment’s duty aright. 

Michael’s spell ceased, he was silent in shock. All the bright little spheres went dark, leaving only the dim oil lamps positioned at intervals around the room. The effect was striking, as if the sun itself had crashed, sending the room from daylight to firelight, all at once.

Before Castiel even had time to be pleasantly surprised that it worked, there was a mighty sound from far away, the most powerful they’d yet heard. It called to mind thunder, but that wasn’t quite right. It came primarily from underground, from the direction of the tunnel.

Another sound, just like the first one, but closer. The  _ pops _ and  _ booms  _ came quick after that, all around. The rushing sound from the tunnel faded. The only conclusion was that the water was being drained away.

Had they been too late? No -- Castiel was sure that Michael hadn’t completed his spell, he’d hardly even begun it. Was it a farce, and he was already done? No, there was no denying that Michael was as surprised as the rest. He was an excellent liar, but, paradoxically, not much of an actor.

If he was surprised before, that turned to shock when, from the darkness of the tunnel,  _ Crowley _ stepped forth. It was so bizarre and unexpected that laughter actually bubbled up in Castiel’s chest, and he had to stifle it to avoid drawing attention. 

_ boom _

Crowley managed to get past Dean and Sam, who seemed momentarily stunned. Castiel’s whole mind spun up trying to figure out how hewas planning to get past Michael and Naomi… That was, until a  _ second _ figure stormed into the lamplight behind him, clearly in chase.

Lucifer. 

Michael drew a blade, and Naomi followed suit.

Lucifer was  _ aghast _ at having run into Michael, he’d clearly expected only to be pursuing Crowley, and it showed on his face. From the moment their eyes met, they were completely focused on one another, and no one in the room thought it safe to let their attention stray from the momentary stalemate between them. Powerless or not, the whole room was poised on the brink of chaos.

_ boom-boom-boom _

Castiel only glanced away for a moment -- and he saw Crowley shoot him a cheerful smirk and a little farewell finger-wave as he slipped through the door and his footsteps retreated. He looked the part of a small bit of prey, fleeing a predator who’d just spotted something much juicier to hunt. 

“Michael,” Lucifer said, the snarl in his voice somehow imbued with a deep affection that couldn’t stay a secret no matter how hard he tried. He shrugged, as much for himself as for everyone else. “You know, I never pictured it like this. But hey -- you know me, I’m a flexible guy. We could bond over a little fratricide and cut out someone who betrayed us both...”

Lucifer jerked his thumb at Castiel, and Sam had to physically hold Dean back, an act for which Castiel was deeply grateful. 

“I never imagined it this way either,” said Michael, “but I’m willing to take revenge however it presents itself.”

“Excuse me?!” All eyes darted to Lucifer again. “Revenge? I uh…” Lucifer chuckled strangely, a sick and manic sound. “Who put  _ who _ under a mountain again?”

There was no time for them. A concussive _ crash  _ much bigger and deeper than all the others sounded, and the whole world, as Castiel felt it, began to shake. There was shouting from every voice in the room, but the words were lost, unable to compete with the fever pitch around them, the crashing of glass spheres, the menacing crack and scrape of stone on stone, and the roar of the ground itself. 

For just a moment Castiel saw the sky’s light, as the walls began their first, inexorable splits.

Around and above, the castle fell.  

 


	10. Crowley

Crowley ran. 

Since his “ascension,” as Lucifer was so wont to call what he was doing to Goblins, he could not remember ever running like he ran now. He took stairs three at a time and, where the handrails existed and looked stable, he pulled on them for leverage. Every little bit of speed counted.

Deep inside him, somewhere between chest and belly, was his umbilicus to the world he’d come from, some day long long ago. As Lucifer had widened the portal that brought him power, he had learned to feel exactly where it was, the rate of the movement of energy, and the depth of the reservoir he could access

It was dark, now, something he had  _ never  _ felt. The empty, frozen silence at his core was worse than anything he could remember from Lucifer. Nausea washed over him, and sweat infused his clothes.

Still, he ran.

He had planned it all perfectly. 

Even now, even as he fled, he almost couldn’t believe it. Up to this very moment, he’d maintained a healthy sort of pessimism. He assumed the worst at all times. 

_ Surely _ Lucifer would have found his experiments and hidden that knowledge, only to reveal it at a moment when he could do the most damage. Certainly if he _ hadn’t already  _ uncovered Crowley’s work, he would stumble upon it at the most inopportune moment. Most assuredly, even if Crowley  _ were  _ to complete his invention of a new type of explosive charge based on the ones the miners used (just with many, many times the power output) Lucifer would discover him in the process of  _ placing  _ said charges and put a stop to it. And obviously, if he  _ did _ manage to place the charges, Lucifer would find them before he could set them off and escape. 

What he hadn’t accounted for was the simple fact that each doubt, each pessimistic surety, led to a bit of lateral thinking to at least improve the odds of that undesirable outcome being avoided, and in the end,  _ none _ of those things had happened.

That was the difference between himself and Lucifer, he realized now: Lucifer’s hubris, versus Crowley’s paranoia.

Crowley ran until he was well clear of the castle and the guards, until he was so far he’d gone beyond the radius of those boneheads’ magical block, and he felt power infuse him once again. 

As the finale of his underground fireworks rocked the very foundations of the castle and brought it down on the heads of Lucifer, Michael, and the fools that got tied up in their drama, the picture was clear. 

Paranoia had won the day.

Practically everyone who had any reason to distrust Crowley, or to suspect he was anything other than a human, and  _ everyone _ who had any amount of power to act on those suspicions, was in that building. 

The same paranoia that had propelled him to victory thus far whispered in his ear: The castle was falling, yes, but there was no guarantee that any or all of them were dead. He would still have to be cautious. That said, there was a very good chance that it would at least distract any survivors long enough for him to get as far away as possible. 

Maybe to the north, Crowley thought at first: Goblins, as a whole, were not overly fond of sunlight. Once the ascension had bestowed upon Crowley they ability to read, he had studied the geography of the world where he lived -- at least, to the degree it was mapped, anyway -- and discovered that generally speaking, the north had winters even colder and darker than this place did. 

As he caught his breath, he saw something strange. The sky was almost empty, the birds most likely taking shelter from the storm in trees and eaves and mountain outcrops. Yet, far overhead, a dark winged shape battled the wind, all on its own. 

For some reason he couldn’t quite identify, Crowley found himself rooting for the thing. Both of them, maybe looking for a safe place to land. 

If anyone  _ was  _ going to go looking for him, that’s just where they’d go, for all the reasons it was attractive to him. Besides, the bigger cities were all to the south. He could blend in better there.

South it was.  


	11. Air and Water

_Dean!_

Sam sounded frightened, which was all it took. Dean opened his eyes to clouds as dark and rushing as the sea, pelting him with rain. He coughed, but the resulting inhale only brought more dust into his lungs, forcing him to cough more. He tried to say Sam’s name, but it came out fragmented.

“Sam? Y’okay?” Dean asked reflexively, as soon as he could speak.

The half-cough-half-laugh Sam gave back was strange -- it wasn’t good humored, it was dark. “I’m okay, Dean. I’m… I don’t know, I think I got lucky, I’m... basically _fine_. I’m right here, okay?” Sam’s voice was too soft, too gentle, too comforting.

“Sam,” Dean’s tone did double duty, asking what the hell was going on and warning to cut the bullshit.

Sam just sighed in response.

Dean was sort-of on his back, in a position almost like someone halfway sitting up to read in bed, except instead of pillows behind him, chunks of stone and mortar were digging into his spine and ribs. He was also soaked and freezing.

He tried to get up, he started to twist, but realized almost immediately that he was trapped. He’d thought his legs felt strange, only once he really looked did he realize the extent of it: everything from just above his knees on down was beneath colossal foundation bricks. The strange feeling was apparently numbness, something for which Dean had incredible gratitude all of the sudden. It was better than the alternative.

He’d seen this before. The “smiling death,” physicians called it -- it wasn’t all that rare in the mine. There’d be an accident, someone would get pinned by a leg or an arm, and they would seem strangely alright, until you moved whatever held them down, and then...

Bobby’d gone this way. Maybe it was only fitting. Like the universe calling him on a debt.

It seemed that the collapse had been primarily _outward_ , which was fortunate and unfortunate all at once. Entire sections of wall had come free of their foundations, and they must have slipped right down the mountainside and pitched into the ravine below. If there was flooding after the explosions, which Dean assumed there must be, that would only make things worse as massive pieces of castle displaced the water.

What was left of the structure was mainly a crater full of crap, surrounded by partial broken castle walls, and filling with churning water where the flood was coming up the passageway that Crowley and Lucifer had come out of. They’d all been in that deep room that was now close to the bottom of the dip, which explained the water soaking Dean’s clothes.

When he realized how fast the water was coming out, suddenly he _hoped_ the crush was how he’d die. He preferred that to drowning, entombed in a brand-new raised pond.

Of all of the bad things, the look on Sam’s face was the absolute worst one.

“Stop that,” Dean said, “stop looking at me like that, it’ll be fine. What about Cas?”

“Dean--”

“Stop.”

“Dean! We both know how this ends. Stop pretending. I don’t want that to be my last--” Sam stopped there, half because he couldn’t go on and half because he was being interrupted.

“What about Cas?” Dean ignored it and pressed again, more firmly this time.

“They’re _all_ still out cold, but… I don’t know for how long. I think the magic block is wearing off.” Sam looked around, and Dean followed his gaze. Some of what of he’d thought was just more dust floating around the site was actually a fine white-blue fog that gave off a very slight --but growing-- glow.

The spheres. They all must have been destroyed. Dean suddenly wished he knew a lot more, or really anything at all, about how all this magic stuff worked.  

The water covered Dean’s shoulder and he tried to twist out of the way. It dislodged something just enough to drive a spike of pain down through his body that had him seeing stars for a moment, before it gave way once again to numbness.  

“Well are they _alive?_ Cas? Lucifer? Michael? The other one?” Dean couldn’t remember her name, the severe-looking one who’d followed Michael like an obedient hound.

“Ssshh!” Someone hissed.

The water sloshed with the wind. Sam put a knee on one side of Dean, bracing him so he wasn’t on his own holding the position that kept him out of the flood.

Dean squinted through the mist and the dust and as it parted, he saw her: Hannah. Instead of the funereal gown she’d worn when they saw her before, she appeared to be wearing riding trousers and knee-high boots beneath a sky-blue cloak and hood, as if she was itinerant, and this was just a brief stop on the journey.

A tiny bit of the glowing mist eddied around her in a whirlpool shape, as she pulled a large stone off of Cas’ body and knelt down next to him. She looked so solid, so present, nothing at all like before.

Dean was frozen, not even realizing he wasn’t breathing until he saw Cas’ back move as his lungs expanded. His head shifted, and a moment later he was pulling himself to his feet.

Hannah started saying something in Cas’ ear, but he tore away from her the moment he laid eyes on Dean. He scrabbled down the hill of rubble to reach where Dean was pinned.

Should he have felt good about this? That his brother, and… whatever Cas was to him now, were so concerned about his well-being? He didn’t, which added a layer of guilt to the irritation that scratched at his brain.

“Cas--”

Cas’ mouth opened and closed once, then twice, and on the second time his jaw worked with the force of his gritted teeth, and as he looked toward the rest of the crater, his face shifted from concern to fury.

He stood up and turned away.

Hannah was at his side in an instant, whispering again. Dean caught the word _hurry_ at the end.

Cas sat down beside a large piece of debris off to one side, up the wall of the pit in the thickest part of the magical mist, and Hannah followed. Dean couldn’t see much -- the mist was too dense from his angle, and it obscured his view.

“They’re sitting,” Sam shifted so he could see them, so he could narrate to Dean, “He’s uh… they’re holding hands, but… oh weird, the mist is kind of... spiraling around her. No, wait, _through_ her, into Cas! Like a prism!” Sam said, a little awed.

How did they know what to do? Was it some kind of Thaumaturge instinct? Did Hannah tell him, when she was whispering, or maybe without speaking at all? It was a reminder of everything Dean didn’t grasp about Cas. The pull of his curiosity was so strong it was like a physical clenching in his chest. He wanted to get closer, to understand as much as he could, but there wasn’t much chance of that, now.

The water lapped at Dean’s chin, even with Sam doing his best to hold him out of the way. _Come on, just slow down a little… I just want to see Cas and Sam get out of here safe, and then whatever happens... happens._

The mist disappeared into Hannah little by little, and Dean got a better view. Light could be seen, just a bit, from between their interlocked fingers.

Movement caught Dean’s attention -- Michael stirred, and from the other side of a fallen block, Lucifer was getting to his feet. The other one, who must have been another sister of Cas’, didn’t appear. Did she have any magic? Or was she as likely to be dead as Dean was?

Dean craned his neck to keep his mouth above the water.

“LUCIFER!” Michael called, looking around, apparently not seeing Cas from where he stood and paying little mind to the mist. He must have had power of own enough, to where it didn’t concern him, or maybe he was just _that_ focused. “SHOW YOURSELF!”

Lucifer flung himself, _clearly_ supported by the magic he was no longer blocked from using, over the obstacle in front of him.

At the last moment before Michael attacked, Sam must have realized what was happening, because he dropped low and buried his face in Dean’s shoulder, and at the same time covered Dean’s eyes with his arm. The pressure put Dean’s face underwater.

Even then, Dean could see the flash, and there was a wave of heat. Sam popped back up again, and Dean raised his head as much as he could.

Lucifer seemed unaffected, though the area around him looked like it had been touched by the sun.

They were okay for the moment, or at least Sam was, and then something odd happened -- Michael seemed to realize Dean was there, taking his glimpse down into the crater where Dean was trapped _just_ at the moment that Dean was twisting to get a better look at Cas.

Michael moved up the slope of the crater, changed his perspective to follow the line of Dean’s sight, and staggered when he realized. He stretched out his hand and made some effortful gesture, probably trying to stop what Cas was doing? Maybe to redirect it? But with a twist of pleasure, Dean realized it was too late. Most of the mist was already gone, into Cas. The same light that peeked from between their hands could be seen _through Cas’ eyelids_.

Lucifer clambered closer.

“Sam, you gotta run,” Dean said quietly, between lunges forward to breathe.

“No,” said Sam, wedging his arms under Dean’s head, trying to make it easier for him to stay above the surface.

“Sammy, come on, this can’t all be for nothing.”

“It won’t be,” Sam assured. “That’s why I’m not going anywhere. Whatever happens to us, it happens to us _together._ ” After a brief pause, a smirk grew into a smile, and he added: “Besides, you’re trapped under a rock. How _exactly_ are you gonna make me leave?”

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

There was a flash, and all eyes were on Cas. Hannah looked at Dean, smiled slightly, and then… she simply _wasn’t_.

Cas had opened his eyes. They were full of light and nothing else, so bright that it obscured his features and gave him the look of a man gazing calmly, neutrally, into infinity.

 

 

The mist was gone. The spheres were nothing but broken glass amid the rubble, and with no more power to absorb, the wind itself began to churn around Cas. Dean was moved to smile.

Cas didn’t look like a prince, but a _king_ , truly, or something even grander than that. He turned his head to regard the bare ground with a furrowed brow. One loose, relaxed arm stretched out in the direction of his gaze, and he turned his palm up toward the sky.

The ground there burst forth with a little _pop,_ and Goblins spilled out like rabbits chased from their warren. They scampered like rabbits, too. There had to be at least fifty of them, all told, once the stream tapered off.

“So! He’s [...] after all! Ah, Cassie, I knew [...] power, you’d _see the light!_ Get it!?” Lucifer laughed at his own bad joke, half of which Dean was perfectly happy to have missed due to the splashing around his ears. He caught Lucifer beckoning to the Goblins, but they didn’t obey.

“Try again, asshole!” Dean shouted, though it gurgled a little with the water getting in his mouth. He was going to die anyway, so he didn’t have much to lose. Might as well gloat. “Guess who _smells like a gate_ now!”

Several things happened, not quite all at once.

Michael shouted something. He balled both hands into fists, and Sam poised himself to cover Dean once more, but it was unnecessary.

The goblins stilled around Cas, and little rivulets of light streamed from their bodies into his.

Naomi ( _that_ was her name, Dean remembered) appeared at a distance, pulling herself weakly to her feet from behind a large hunk of wall. She was covered in blood and dust, Dean could tell that much, but he couldn’t make out what she held in her hand.

Whatever it was, her arm coiled like a spring, and when she let loose, the little dark things zipped through the air and hit Michael like something from a cannon, right in the back of the neck. That answered the _does she have magic_ question. No one could throw like that unaided.

“Are those… _nails?”_ Sam asked no one, squinting. “Some kind of metal--”

“NO!” Lucifer hollered as Michael crumpled. His _no_ was so torn from him, so guttural it was barely a word at all. He turned on Naomi, and all he did was _snap_ and even at a distance, Dean heard the crack of her neck. It didn’t matter she was already dead. He kept screaming anyway. “He was mine! He was _mine,_ you bitch! It was _me! ONLY I HAVE THAT RIGHT!”_

The sound of Lucifer’s voice cut in and out as the water rose around Dean’s face. It was a fucking mess. The whole thing was a fucking awful stupid mess. What would history books say about this? That the last few living Thaumaturges had a magical slap fight to the death?

That was the last thing Dean saw without the veil of dirty green-gray water in front of his eyes. He took a deep breath.  

Through the water, he saw the shape of Cas, floating above the ground. He waited for the storm-tide to shift, to give him a chance to cough out the contents of his lungs and fill them again as quick as he could.

Cas said something, in what sounded like a thousand voices that reverberated through every molecule of every thing.

Lucifer said something back. It didn’t matter what it was. All the mattered was holding air until the opportunity came to quickly let it out and bring in again.

The water rippled in a growing wind. Dean had just a second this time before he was submerged again.

Slosh - cough - gasp.

Dean realized the word Cas was saying in his million voices was _“go.”_ A little pinpoint of light appeared at the lowest point of the crater, with his eyes open he could see it faintly below the surface of the water. It swelled until it was an undulating ball that stretched well above the surface, it had to be at least the height of a man.

Slosh - cough - gasp.

With Sam’s assistance, Dean did the rhythm again, but the water was higher when it came flooding back. That was probably the last breath he was going to get. It was wet, and that made it hard to hold.

The water shifted still, it battered him against the rock and he struggled to keep that one breath in.

Flashes zapped through the world above the surface. Dean lost track of whose they were, where they came from and where they were going. Nearly all his attention was on his swollen chest, his aching back, his spasming throat. Buried beneath it all like a grain of sand under an anvil was the stray hope that whatever was happening up there, Cas was winning.

There was a roar and crash beneath the water - splashes thundered around him as the Goblins stumbled eagerly forward, bounding over stone and wood and obstacles in that, all-four-limbs sort of way. Dean could see their feet stutter around below the waterline. They didn’t like the water, but it was clear from their movement that they weren’t being given a choice. A few of them stopped, milling around Michael’s paralyzed, half-floating body.

Dean saw Lucifer’s feet disappear behind a swarm of Goblin legs. One Goblin fell, and then another, and another after that, one by one -- Lucifer was doing his best to fight.

Dean’s vision started to go gray around the edges. Lucifer’s feet got knocked out from under him. He was swept away in a tide of Goblins, down and down, and into the light. That, or Dean was imagining it to comfort himself.

Even as the tunnel of his vision constricted and his world was reduced to almost nothing but the _burn burn burn_ in his chest, he saw one last thing: the ones pushing Michael’s frozen shape, bringing up the end of their sick little parade.

He let out his lungful of dead air into the water as bubbles. It was a beautiful relief, as good as any pleasure he’d ever felt. Better than sex, better than food, he could have _cried_. For a moment, he choked on the water that tried to go down his throat, but it didn’t last. His body was too hungry to expand his lungs, and if that meant taking in water, well, so be it.

At some point, he stopped fighting. Time stretched and dilated until it seemed that years had passed.

He stopped panicking. _You did good,_ said Bobby’s voice in his head.

It was okay.

And then there was light, he saw it through his eyelids like the sun coming out from behind the clouds.

A sharp whine sounded from far away, and then the familiar grumble of a stone falling to pieces.

Dean’s eyes flew open. Hot pain _exploded_ through his legs. He heard himself scream expletives inside his own head and every muscle in his body tensed, and then relaxed. Something cool swept from his hips down to his feet, like he was being covered in ice just as strong arms pulled him from the water.

He rolled onto his stomach and wheezed in just enough air to gag and cough the dirty floodwater from his lungs. His eyes burned and he retched and it seemed to go on forever, until it didn’t, until he inhaled, and it hurt, but it was just air, or close enough.

Dean looked up. What a picture he must make, he thought -- shivering, red-faced, tear-streaked,  half-drooling. At least if he pissed himself no one would notice.

Nevertheless, Sam was _thrilled._ Relief and joy took his face utterly over, and he almost _aggressively_ pulled an exhausted-looking Cas into a tight hug that went on for some time and included a considerable amount of back-patting. Cas smiled weakly at Dean over Sam’s shoulder until he was released.

Dean lifted himself experimentally into a sitting position, and caught Naomi doing the same a little ways away. Cas must have fixed her too, somehow.

He really was something else.

“So… what now?” Dean asked, his voice rattling with the wet still in his throat and chest.

Cas just casually rested one of his hands on one of Dean’s, and Dean felt a flush creep up his cheeks.

“Now,” Naomi said, approaching, “We get rid of that thing, so they can’t come back.”

Cas nodded. He stood up and brushed himself off, not that it did much good - no better than it had when he’d been covered in mud the night they’d first met. There was so much dust and rain in his hair it seemed to be covered in a gray paste, and his clothes weren’t much better off, weighed down and sopping. He took a big breath, closed his eyes, and focused. Naomi put a steadying hand on his back.

The gate got smaller and smaller, its brightness increasing all the while, until Dean had to look away, like it was a tiny midday sun that didn’t care about the falling rain.

There was another high-pitch whistle. Dean opened his eyes just in time to see the little former-gate sweep upward into the air, a shooting star in reverse, and high above them, _explode._ It looked and sounded like a firework, but with far more little particles than any firework Dean had ever seen, and instead of disappearing after a few seconds, they continued to glow all the way down.

He glanced at Sam, who was breathless, the little dots of light reflected in his eyes as they fell on the mountain like snow, or confetti.

Only once the sky was safely clear did that big black bird of Cas’ descend from somewhere to alight on a particularly tall piece of castle wall, above the proceedings.

“Cas?” Dean got to his feet. His face asked the question his shaking mouth struggled to form.

“In a way,” Cas explained between labored breaths, his eyes still on the sky, “Michael did us all a favor. Taking our power away for all our lives, gave us -- the four of us -- a chance to do what few of our kind ever have.” Cas looked down at his hands, as if they were different now, somehow. “We... _grew_ souls. We don’t _need_ that power anymore. The people do, the mountain does. _Life_ here needs it, it always has. To be honest, it never should have been ours to begin with. I put it back, where it belongs.”

Dean enclosed Cas’ hand with his own, like it was a little bird he was trying to keep safe. “Does that mean you’re all…” Dean trailed off.

Cas nodded. “Human.”

 

 


	12. No Less than the Trees and the Stars

They were like babies, every one of them -- or rather, all of them collectively. The entire kingdom was born anew on that day, screaming, wet, and filthy, from a crater on a crag.

Castiel took his first breath, a deep inhale of dusty, rainy air, and everything was so frenetic from that moment that it was as though he didn’t let it out for half a year.

Turnip, for her part, was so distressed by the collapse that she hardly left Castiel’s side, checking in nearly every day and spending long hours on his shoulder or his arm or the pommel of his saddle, when he rode.

There were a thousand orders of business, and Naomi was brilliant with every one of them. The ideas had come spilling out of her so fast Castiel had hardly had a chance to write them down.

Naomi was the one that knew who among the nearest lands would be friendly, and who might take advantage of their time of weakness. It was Naomi who reached out in search of builders skilled enough to manage and train the miners who were now out of work -- and it had been Naomi’s idea to put _them_ on the job in the first place.

Of course, she’d apologized to Castiel, and to Anna, and to numerous people for the ways she’d hurt them, but that wasn’t what gave Castiel so much confidence in her. Her every decision, her every _action_ , was an apology, an endeavor to make things right that she didn’t give up on when it got hard.

It was also her idea to tell the truth, to _everyone,_ which was the biggest surprise of all, the clearest sign that more had changed than just the way she looked.

Anna also turned out to be quite the diplomat -- The strategic mind she’d honed as a warrior proved no less useful in peaceful negotiations surrounding the changed economy.

Winter was upon them, but it felt more like spring, to see his sisters bloom in a way they’d never been allowed under the shadow of Michael’s rule. Castiel could count on two hands the genuine smiles he’d seen on both of their faces for most of his life, and now, despite the considerable drop in luxury, a day hardly seemed to pass that they didn’t smile at least once.

There was a lot Michael had never told them. Not only did they unearth the original treasury in the mess of the ruined castle, but soldiers who’d once guarded and inventoried it revealed that it was only a tenth of the total wealth they’d stored -- that the rest was not in the castle at all, but in a location Michael had never disclosed.

This meant that every servant could be paid a full wage through the construction, whether there was anything for them to do or not -- this, as well, was Naomi’s mandate.

Sam and Dean were utterly instrumental on a number of levels. Dean turned out to be _wasted_ on mining. He had a natural feel for design and construction, and Sam came into his own as a leader and a foreman in his own right.

In that dark, depressing dead of winter that stretched out beyond the New Year, Dean and Castiel announced their courtship in an official capacity, confirming the swirling rumors. The sheer scale of the resulting celebration set reconstruction back at least a week. Under any other circumstances, Castiel would have preferred to keep it all a nice quiet secret, but if there was one thing the whole kingdom desperately needed, it was a party.

People didn’t seem to care that they couldn’t produce an heir -- the sheer fairytale feeling of the story was a buoy to morale.

Despite his initial protestations to the contrary, Dean seemed to enjoy his time in the limelight, and Sam immediately became the most eligible bachelor for leagues around. Dean, no matter _how_ busy he was, always found time to tease him about it.

Still, no one enjoyed a bigger shift in public opinion than Naomi. Her hair continued to grow out as white as snow, and the populace seemed to see it -- in combination with her newfound warmth -- as a kind of unspoken prophecy fulfilled.

When the coronation day came, and Castiel revealed that it was Naomi who would be crowned rather than Castiel (a thing that they’d conspired together about for several weeks by that point, poring over recovered texts and speaking with what felt like a thousand counselors) the surprise was gleefully accepted by all.

It also gave them at least a _chance_ of avoiding a succession crisis in one way or another, which had to have helped.

They planned a new edifice, less fortress and more palace, welcoming and comfortable, from the ruins of the first. They began with a core structure where it would be possible to live and work during construction, and they built outward from there, preserving the historical and using the salvaged materials where they could, and creating something entirely new where new was called for.

By the time the winter ice finally began to drip into the creeks of the mountain and life began to start anew, the worst was already over.

Castiel didn’t see Hannah after that last day in the ruins, not once. The part of him that had felt her pain, her fear, her need to be present… it was quiet. The last time he’d seen her, she was dressed in her traveling clothes. He didn’t know where she’d traveled to, but deep in the core that connected them, he was confident that she was at peace.

  
  


* * *

 

 

 

The spring was unlike any they’d had in living memory. The mountain was a riot of life and color -- both things that grew wild, and things that had been planted by those optimistic enough to believe that the mountain could change after all. If there was anyone who doubted that the magic belonged in the earth, those doubts were shredded wholly by the time the equinox arrived.

Even Turnip seemed to grow fat, feasting on the worms and insects that emerged from their holes as the weather warmed.

It was the eve of the equinox, beneath a canopy of fragrant pink trees that had, in Castiel’s lifetime, never once bloomed before, that Dean pulled him aside.

“Cas, I… we gotta…” Dean swallowed, and ran one hand through the hair he’d had cut today -- a spring tradition for eldest sons. He’d told Castiel that he’d done it by himself, or had Sam do it, every year before. This year, Castiel had found him a proper barber.

“Dean?” Castiel stepped deep into his personal space, and it had a calming effect, but only for a brief moment before Dean’s bared anxiety ratcheted itself back up again.

“I gotta leave. Me and Sam,” Dean blurted, and from there the rest of the words escaped as if of their own accord, Dean fidgeted and paced and babbled like he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I still -- This doesn’t change anything, okay? It’s not forever, maybe. I’ll visit. I swear. I’ll visit _all the time,_ but...

“It’s like how you put the magic back in the mountain, ‘cause it belonged there, ‘cause people need it there. You were right, and I just can’t stop thinking... We did good, but people need us, _out there.”_ Dean’s gestures grew wilder and his words all strung together. “All those Goblins that escaped, and their pets, and some of ‘em look like people! And you wouldn’t know if you didn’t know what to look for, and _Crowley_ is out there, and people don’t know how to deal with them, they’re just _out there_ , people are gonna get hurt, and--”

“Dean, stop, stop, it’s alright--”

“--And we can do something about it,” Dean said, summing up anxiously, finally taking a breath. “I can’t sleep at night, Cas. I just keep thinking… someone’s gotta do something, and we _can._ I kept almost telling you, but I just….”

Dean let out a breath that shook a little.

Castiel pressed his hands into Dean’s shoulders, as if to steady him. “You can’t save everyone, Dean.”

“I know, I know,” Dean said. He ran a hand across his face, as if wiping something away. “But--”

“You have to try,” Castiel answered. “I understand.”

Dean stopped in his tracks, looking for all the world like hadn’t accounted for this as a possible reply at all.

Somewhere in the pastel canopy, Turnip _cawwed_ her peanut-gallery comment.

Castiel let a smile raise the corners of his mouth. He’d been doing that a lot lately, and the last time he’d looked in a mirror he saw the creases to prove it. He said, “You’re going to ignore all the smart advice, to do what you think is right, despite… what was it? _Pretty shitty odds_?”

“Yeah,” Dean sounded dry-mouthed. “That… that sounds familiar. I thought you’d… I don’t know…”

“You thought I would what?” Castiel’s indignation was only half-mocking. He narrowed his eyes at Dean, but the smile didn’t fade. “Love a bird for what it chooses to do with the power of flight, and then try to cage it?”

Dean’s face softened and flushed, which was incredibly gratifying. Castiel didn’t feel as though he often came up with clever or graceful things to say in the moment, so on the rare occasion that he was so inspired, it was nice to get a reaction.

When Dean reached up to put one hand on each side of Castiel’s face, it became clear he was shaking still, just a little. He leaned forward and pulled Castiel in, so that their foreheads touched. Dean held them there, letting his eyes fall shut and taking slow drags of shared breath.

“Don’t ever change,” Dean murmured through a breathy laugh.

It wasn’t Dean’s way to put his feelings in a neat little row of words, though he did try, always pointing out that his uncle had tried to teach him to, would have wanted him to. Castiel tried likewise, though, to meet him halfway, to hear the things he had a hard time saying out loud.

Things like _I’ll miss you._

Castiel tilted his chin so that he could slip into the space and press his mouth against Dean’s. Between kisses, he asked, “When?”

Dean made a sort of sighing sound before he answered. “Well, we’ve been hearing rumors…” He kissed back, and his hands started to travel. “...Sightings already happening, and… obviously I’m not going anywhere before tomorrow, but…”

“Soon,” Castiel extrapolated. “Dean, if this is about Naomi becoming queen--”

Dean had to pull away then, because of the laugh that overtook him. “Cas…” he couldn’t even talk, he had to catch his breath. “Cas, when I first saw you I thought you were some kind of weirdo lost traveling salesman or something, and I was _still_ making excuses to hang around you a little longer.”

Castiel took a deep breath and let it out. Imagining the space they’d only just begun to share without Dean in it made him feel cold, and he pressed himself closer to Dean as if he could bottle that heat for later.

“I’m gonna visit,” Dean murmured, kisses straying close to Castiel’s ear, which raised pleasant goosebumps all over his body. “I’m gonna visit so often you’re gonna get sick of me.”

The laugh that escaped Castiel was lower and raspier than he’d even expected. “I doubt that very much.”

“Wish I could just take you with me,” Dean said through a sigh. “‘Specially now you don’t have to do king stuff. It’d be perfect. Just you and me and Sam, on the road, under the sky…”

“A bit like this,” Castiel said about the twilight.

Dean laughed against Castiel’s skin. “Yeah. Exactly. Perfect”

“Would you… actually want that?”

“Are you kidding?” Dean “‘You’re gonna be the only thing missing.”

“Mm,” Castiel uttered ambivalently, “I wonder if Sam would feel the same.”

Dean withdrew enough to show Castiel a frown, and shake his head. “Cas, Sam was the one that _brought it up_ it to me. I mean, I was _thinkin’_ it but I never said anything, he said I should ask you to come with us. He _wanted_ you to come with us.”

“I… I can’t do what I did before, Dean. I’m not as… as _useful_ as I was, I don’t have those abilities anymore.”

“So?”

“So, why?” Castiel trailed off.

“Cas, is it really so hard to believe he thinks of you as family too?” Dean questioned. “Besides, it’s not like we really know what we’re doing. We’re making it up as well go along.”

It was, in fact, somewhat hard to accept, given Castiel’s own fractured experience with family, but he had little choice but to do so.

Dean pulled Castiel back in and Castiel let himself be pulled. It was so easy to be close.

“You don’t have to come just ‘cause I said that stuff,” Dean hedged. “I’m not trying to--”

Castiel wanted to impel him to settle. He sent one hand skirting up the back of Dean’s head and into his hair, fingertips sliding roughly against his scalp. It worked. Dean’s eyes fell closed. He hummed, and Castiel kissed his neck to feel the buzz of it.

The weather was perfect, and the woods were quiet. They stayed there together until it was fully dark, a clear and dewy night, and then they stayed there together some more. Sometime before the dawn, Castiel told Dean his decision.

When Dean fell asleep, Castiel looked down at Hannah’s ring, which he wore still, on the index finger of his left hand.

The slender golden thread, so fine it could hardly be seen, yet seemingly impossible to break, still extended from from where Castiel’s end of it was tied around the band.

The first time he’d seen it again, after Hannah had gone, they’d all been drinking -- Dean, and Sam, and Anna, and Naomi, and Castiel, all together in a strange, belated party to commemorate their survival. Half drunk, he’d looked up at where the thread was leading. He’d tried to follow it, but the moment he took a step past Dean, it vanished. He’d turned around, and there it was again.

He’d passed Dean (much to the amusement of his observing companions) about three times before Sam went from smirking to _cackling_ uproariously, like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen in his life. It had been so obvious to Sam and everyone else, and it had taken so long for it to dawn on Castiel.

When Castiel ultimately told Naomi of his intention to accompany them, she was reticent, but she saw the need and finally gifted them horses as a way to show her approval. Sam had once been a bit nervous around the horses, but time and necessity had made a competent rider of him. Dean, on the other hand, had ridden from day one as if he was born to do so. He had bonded almost instantly with a black filly who had taken to absolutely no one else. The news that he’d get to keep her bowled Dean over with joy.

Within the half-month, the three of them had made all the necessary arrangements. On a hazy morning, as the dawn colored the mountain mist in oranges and pinks, they set forth on the road through the trees that led out into a strange continent.

Since the night that they’d all celebrated together, Castiel’s golden thread had only ever pointed him toward Dean.

It went right on in the very same manner for the rest of his days.

  


 

The End.


End file.
